Treesearch

Modern tools in genetic engineering are enabling the development of diverse and exciting strategies for the genetic control of pest insects. This technological development takes time. Communicating where along the developmental timeline a nascent technology exists, and how long the technology might take to reach the next stage, is important for managing expectations between key stakeholders. Importantly, while the key stages in technology development can be standardized with different metrics or stage-gates, the residence time that different technologies will require at each stage is not...

In northeastern North America, episodic eastern spruce budworm (Choristoneura fumiferana) outbreaks extensively defoliate balsam fir (Abies balsamea) and spruces (Picea glauca, Picea rubens, Picea mariana). We investigated eastern spruce budworm defoliation in eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis), a reported alternate host species, during previously documented outbreaks in Maine, USA. We compiled red spruce and hemlock tree-ring series from nine sites, seven of which showed synchronous radial growth reductions in spruce and hemlock during documented budworm outbreaks. Outbreak evidence...

We used field measurements and sampling simulations with existing tree-level data to assess the precision of the estimates and data measurement costs for ground-based sampling inventory for above-ground tree biomass (AGB) and basal area estimation. Data were obtained from primary wet tropical forests using field measurements in Costa Rica and, for simulations, published tree-level data on Barro Colorado Island in Panama. Plot configurations and costs were compared using criteria commonly used by forest carbon offset project developers to meet precision of +/−10% at 90% confidence interval...

In snow‐dominated areas, runoff from winter precipitation can comprise up to 80% of the annual water budget. Warming winters are shifting snow precipitation to rain, shortening the snow accumulation and melt seasons, and increasing midwinter melt events and flooding during rain‐on‐snow events. At the same time, forests are changing in species composition and geographical extent, and forest‐dominated catchments can mediate the effects of increased winter temperatures on snow dynamics. Here, we combine climatic data and high‐resolution forest and snow observations to investigate the complex...

Residential yards are a common land use in tropical cities, and often poorly planned in terms of biodiversity conservation. One of the most striking features of tropical cities is deep social inequality: poor neighborhoods are often devoid of basic infrastructure, including parks. The social inequity is also reflected in the vegetation cover in residential landscapes: most upper and middle-income neighborhoods contain abundant and high-quality vegetation, meaning they have more shrubs, trees and greater species diversity compared to low-income neighborhoods, where cement reigns. Accelerated...

Many regions of the world have seen an increase in highly destructive wildfires, driven by well-documented increases in burned area and growth of housing in the wildland–urban interface (WUI), which exposes more homes to fire. However, it is unclear whether wildfires are also becoming more destructive due to changes in wildfire behavior or in the development patterns of exposed communities. Here, we assessed trends in wildfire building exposure and destruction rates in the conterminous United States from 2002 to 2022. We mapped destroyed and surviving buildings within 100 m of all wildfires...

The present and future host ranges of pests have important implications for ecology, economics and health. Most multi-host pests have phylogenetically conserved host symbioses, but jumps to phylogenetically distant hosts are surprisingly common and can have large fitness consequences. We introduce a model representing host distributions as outcomes of random jumps across a host phylogeny, with jump probabilities proportional to a power function of phylogenetic distance, parallel to Lévy flights in foraging behaviour. Using machine learning, we fit our model to empirical data on insect and...

National forest inventories (NFIs) play an important role in the monitoring and management of natural resources and are typically implemented as sample-based surveys that provide a probabilistic basis for making inferences about the population being sampled. Some estimators incorporate data collected from the population that are auxiliary to the sample, especially remote sensing imagery. The study presented here examined the efficiency of some of these estimators, including the post-stratified (PS) and model-assisted estimators. It introduces an estimator that combines the efficiency of...

The land carbon sink of the conterminous United States was evaluated using a bottom-upmodeling framework and 30-meter land change data from 1985 to 2020. This cross-scale,cross-landscape, and cross-system approach tracked fractional land cover changes and applied regional model calibration. Results show average terrestrial and aquatic carbon sinks of +110 ± 37 and +19 ± 0.5 teragrams of carbon per year, respectively. The terrestrialcarbon sink, showing no clear trend, peaked in the 1990s, with more years as a carbon source since 2000, contradicting recent national and global studies. Land...

Whether the diversity and composition of animal communities are determined by vegetation structure or composition has been an ongoing debate. However, due to combined shortcomings of data and methodology, vegetation structure has been prioritised when trying to understand the effects of vegetation upon animal communities. Here, we explored the relative importance of vegetation structure and woody plant species composition on the prediction of small mammal assemblages for an Atlantic Forest landscape. Compositional (small mammals and woody plants) and vegetation structural data were...