Treesearch

The growing adoption of forest certification reflects a global shift toward more sustainable forest management and trade. Yet, the trade impacts of certification remain uneven, shaped by how these voluntary standards interact with national legal and regulatory environments. This study explores the conditions under which forest certification influences wood product exports, with a particular attention to the concept of institutional complementarity, where private standards and public laws reinforce each other. Using an extended gravity model of bilateral trade, the analysis integrates...

Data collected from almost 200 plots in Madison, Wisconsin from 2015 through 2021, reveal that the city has an estimated 2.9 million live trees at least 1.0-inch in diameter across all ownerships. The most common tree species by number are common buckthorn, boxelder, and white ash, while those at least 5.0 inches or greater are boxelder, honeylocust, and northern white cedar. The largest number of trees (49.7 percent; 1.4 million trees) are found on forest land. Trees on public lands total 1.7 million and account for almost 58 percent of all live trees. Trees at least 15.0 inches in...

Global climate change threatens biodiversity, in part due to its effects on species distributions and habitat suitability. The ability to predict future impacts and discern variability in rates of change is critical for conservation planning. Here, we quantified the relative influence of climate and tree species metrics on contemporary and future patterns of incidence (i.e., an index of broad-scale habitat conditions and a metric of habitat suitability) associated with forest-breeding birds across the eastern USA and assessed trends in decadal trajectories of future projections. We...

Abstract. Boreal peatlands store 13 %–32 % of the global soil carbon (C) stock, a service dependent on plant-mycorrhizal fungi associations. In these nutrient poor systems, ectomycorrhizal and ericoid mycorrhizal fungi supply up to >80 % of the nutrient requirements of their plant hosts, partly with mined nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) from soil organic matter that are otherwise inaccessible to plants. Despite the ecological significance, mycorrhizal associations are only represented in a few land surface or ecosystem models. We modify the peatland branch of version 2 of the Energy...

Juglans cinerea L. (2n = 16), commonly known as butternut, is a diploid species native to the eastern forests of the United States and Canada. It plays a crucial ecological role as a food source for wildlife and is traditionally used as a medicine by tribal communities. Butternut populations have severely declined over 50 years due to butternut canker disease (BCD). The ability of butternut to hybridize with Japanese walnut, which exhibits resistance to BCD, complicates hybrid identification based on morphological traits alone. In this study, we assembled the chloroplast genome of butternut...

Butternut (Juglans cinerea L.) is a rapidly declining tree species threatened by Ophiognomonia clavigignenti-juglandacearum (Oc-j), the causal agent of butternut canker. The introduction of Japanese walnut (Juglans ailantifolia Carrière), which hybridizes with butternut and exhibits greater resistance to the disease, presents both a conservation challenge and a potential avenue for genetic improvement. Identifying non-admixed butternuts is critical for conservation efforts and breeding programs aimed at preserving the species’ genetic integrity while exploring resistance strategies....

The environmental suitability of a particular organism is often a combination of local climatic factors, resource competition intensity, as well as pathogen and predator pressure. Pathogen pressure, or host resistance, is particularly important in host species severely impacted by disease. Variations in heritable pathogen resistance can lead to differences in apparent habitat suitability of resistant or susceptible subpopulations. In the case of the butternut tree (Juglans cinerea), habitat suitability is limited by genetic resistance to the non-native butternut canker disease (BCD) in...

Tree of heaven [ Ailanthus altissima (Mill.) Swingle] is an invasive tree that inhibits regeneration of forests. Management of forests invaded by A. altissima often includes chemically treating it and leaving dead boles behind. Verticillium wilt ( Verticillium nonalfalfae ) infects some populations of A. altissima , leading to localized mortality. Areas with population-wide A. altissima mortality may increase as this disease spreads or is used as a biocontrol agent. Ailanthus altissima has documented allelopathic compounds; stems left to decompose may result in soil legacy effects that...

Stress from low light availability and flooding can reduce photosynthesis and growth rates of trees, contributing to possible regeneration challenges in bottomland hardwood forests. This study investigated the photosynthetic light responses of pin oak (Quercus palustris Muenchh.) and swamp white oak (Quercus bicolor Willd.) seedlings growing in two light environments and across a hydrological gradient. Our findings revealed that neither light environment nor soil moisture availability had a significant impact on leaf mass per area, light compensation point, dark respiration rate, or...

For over a century, economic ideas have shaped US public land management. This culminated with ‘maximum sustainable yield’ (MSY) becoming a central decision-making framework. However, the passage of major environmental legislation—echoing an American preservationist tradition—spurred the US Forest Service and other public agencies to reconsider this narrow utilitarian approach, setting the stage for the adoption of a social-ecological systems framework emphasizing ecosystem services and resilience—benefits that are largely public goods—aimed at achieving sustainability. However, a reorienta...