Treesearch

Planted forests are an integral part of life for rural and urban communities throughout the United States of America. Beyond wood and wood products, these forests provide essential ecosystem services such as healthy soils, clean and abundant water, and carbon sequestration, while also enhancing livelihoods for producers and consumers (Caputo and Butler, 2017; Domke et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2022).

Nitrogen (N) is a critical element in many ecological and biogeochemical processes in forest ecosystems. Cycling of N is sensitive to changes in climate, atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations, and air pollution. Streamwater nitrate draining a forested ecosystem can indicate how an ecosystem is responding to these changes. We observed a pulse in streamwater nitrate concentration and export at a long-term forest research site in eastern North America that resulted in a 10-fold increase in nitrate export compared to observations over the prior decade. The pulse in streamwater...

This summary report provides an overview of findings from the ninth inventory of Michigan forests based on visits to 4,367 forested plots from 2013 to 2019. Until the 2019 inventory, the base estimate of Michigan forest land had been increasing since the 1980 inventory. The 2019 inventory has 20.2 million acres of forest land. Timberland accounts for 95 percent of this forest land, and 61 percent is privately owned. The sugar maple/beech/yellow birch forest type accounts for 19 percent of Michigan forest land, followed by aspen (12 percent) and white oak/red oak/hickory (7 percent). Balsam...

Efforts to catalog global biodiversity have often focused on aboveground taxonomic diversity, with limited consideration of belowground communities. However, diversity aboveground may influence the diversity of belowground communities and vice versa. In addition to taxonomic diversity, the structural diversity of plant communities may be related to the diversity of soil bacterial and fungal communities, which drive important ecosystem processes but are difficult to characterize across broad spatial scales. In forests, canopy structural diversity may influence soil microorganisms through...

During a time of rapid urban growth and development, it is becoming ever more important to monitor the carbon fluxes of our cities. Unlike Canada’s commercially managed forests that have a long history of inventory and modelling tools, there is both a lack of coordinated data and considerable uncertainty on assessment procedures for urban forest carbon. Nonetheless, independent studies have been carried out across Canada. To improve upon Canada’s federal government reporting on carbon storage and sequestration by urban forests, this study builds on existing data to develop an updated...

Wood products are an essential provisioning ecosystem service with US forests providing nearly one-fifth of global wood supply. As of 2018, an estimated 46% of the annual wood harvested came from corporate forests, 42% came from family forests, and the remainder came from other private, public, and Tribal forests. The supply of wood from corporate forests is well described by traditional economic models, but the supply from family forests is much less well understood. This article combines data from three components of the USDA Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis program—plots,...

Peatlands are large carbon sinks with primary production outpacing decomposition of organic matter. Results from the Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Changing Environments (SPRUCE) study show net losses of organic matter and increased greenhouse gas production from peatlands in response to whole-ecosystem warming. Here, we investigated how warming and elevated CO2 impact peat microbial communities and peat soil decomposition rates and characterized microbial communities through amplicon sequencing and compositional changes across four depth increments. Microbial diversity and community...

Boreal peatlands are important ecosystems for carbon cycling because they store 1/3 of the world’s terrestrial carbon in only ~3% of the global landmass. This high carbon storage capacity makes them a key potential mitigation strategy for increased carbon emissions induced by global climate warming. In highcarbon storage systems like peatlands, soil faunal communities are responsible for secondary decomposition of organic matter and nutrient cycling, which suggests they play an important role in the carbon cycle. Experiments have shown that warming can affect plant and microbial communities...

Theodor Hartig's aphid and scale insect type specimens have been presumed lost or destroyed for the last 140 years. Here we document their discovery at the Bavarian State Collection of Zoology (Zoologische Staatssammlung München, ZSM), in Munich, Germany. These specimens include primary types for 24 aphid, three adelgid, and two armored scale insect species named by Hartig between 1834 and 1851, as well as other specimens of unknown importance.

Mastication, thinning, and prescribed fire can help shift fire-prone forests to a structure and composition more resilient to wildfire, but the ability to evaluate treatment effectiveness requires monitoring forest response to disturbances over time after treatment. In this study, we investigated fuel loadings, forest structure, and tree growth to assess treatment legacies thirteen years after mastication, prescribed fire, and surface fuel pull-back from tree boles in Sierra Nevada mixed-conifer forest. An outbreak of bark beetles between 2011 and 2018 impacted all plots but burned...