Treesearch

Flighted spongy moth, Lymantria dispar asiatica Vnukovskij and Lymantria dispar japonica Motschulsky, is a highly destructive defoliator that threatens forest and urban trees in both its native Asian range and where introduced. This moth goes through outbreak periods with very high population numbers resulting in defoliation of almost all deciduous and coniferous trees and potentially severe human allergic reactions to the insect hairs and scales. Adult females are capable of strong ascending flight and at night are attracted to lights where they lay their egg masses on surrounding...

The emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis, EAB) poses an unprecedented threat to North American Fraxinus species and has already decimated ash populations in large parts of the natural range in the northeastern US. In some forest stands, a few trees remain alive with healthy crowns years after mortality from EAB has killed the majority of ash trees. These trees, called lingering ash, have been identified, replicated by grafting, and screened for resistance to EAB larvae in controlled greenhouse bioassays. This study showed that the proportion of larvae killed by tree defenses, and the...

Warming and elevated atmospheric CO2 profoundly impact peatland ecosystems, particularly through changes in plant species composition. Plants regulate the initial input of organic compounds to peatland belowground systems, controlling the availability of electron donors and electron acceptors that fuel microbially mediated organic matter decomposition to CO2 and CH4. However, explicit links between porewater CO2 and CH4 dynamics and plant‐derived chemical compounds remain relatively undefined. In a whole ecosystem warming experiment, we investigated how warming affects plant leaf chemical...

Introduction: Sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza cuneata) is a nitrogen-fixing legume that is native to Asia and was promoted in the central United States for forage, wildlife habitat, and to mitigate erosion and mine spoils. It has since become a high-impact invasive plant,especially in tallgrass prairie ecosystems. Traditionally, herbicide is the common tool to control Sericea lespedeza’s spread and manage its impact; however, herbicide treatments come at a cost to other restoration efforts.Objectives: This research was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of management to control Sericea...

Prescribed burning is a common management tool for both shortleaf pine and associated oak species, as they can resprout following top-kill and are adapted to frequent surface fire regimes. In Missouri, shortleaf pine often occurs with oaks in mixedwood ecosystems, though its prevalence is diminished from historic levels. With interest in restoring shortleaf pine, research is needed on specific strategies for using prescribed fire to promote shortleaf pine in mixed pine-oak ecosystems. We studied the survival and resprouting of shortleaf pine and oaks of different sizes following a prescribe...

Objective: Although increasing evidence highlights the health benefits of living near green environments, little research has focused on physical interventions that increase the provision of greenspace. City, park, school, and forest managers are in need of program and practice guidance with health endpoints in mind.Material and methods: We conducted a systematic review of longitudinal evaluations of place-based greening interventions and their effects on health outcomes or behaviors. Included studies evaluated the effects of changes in outdoor spaces intended to increase the quantity,...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides this resource update yearly as an overview of forest resources in Missouri. These estimates are derived from field data collected across a systematic network of fixed-radius forest monitoring plots located on both public and private land. New updates are provided annually as a subset of plots within the State are remeasured. Each year, field crews visit and measure a subset of all FIA plots across the entire State (the size of the subset varies by State and year). Combining all...

Environmental action, including that which addresses climate change and takes care of the environment more broadly, could be strengthened by making collaboration across silos more imaginable. In this technical article, we describe a “systems of care” tool that facilitates a broad range of participants to express the local and everyday relations that underpin care for their places and communities. Researchers and practitioners who aim to bring together participants from different sectors can implement the tool, using drawings and narrations of these systems of stewardship and care, to find...

Autonomously self‐fertilizing plants possess disproportionate abilities to found populations. Viewed from the metapopulation perspective, founding events should be frequent in such plants, but the intensity and timing of bottlenecks and recovery should vary among populations. We tested the hypothesis that variation in these demographic characteristics in one such species helps to explain variation in levels of genetic diversity and population genomic signatures of inbreeding, relative recombination, and microscale spatial genetic structure.We used reduced‐representation sequence data from...

We revisit the research legacy of J.R. Blais and re-evaluate his contributions to spruce budworm—forest dynamics in light of a century of research, 1924–2025. We trace the evolution of scientific thought on outbreak ecology and reassess Blais’ foundational insights using contemporary data and methods. Blais’ alignment with a bottom-up, host-driven outbreak paradigm—centered on forest composition and epicentric spread—anticipated many findings now supported by modern research. Re-analysis of Blais’ historical outbreak maps (1802–1940) reveals a longitudinal gradient in outbreak frequency...