Treesearch

Background. Pre-fire fuels, topography, and weather influence wildfire behaviour and fire- driven ecosystem carbon loss. However, the pre-fire characteristics that contribute to fire behaviour and effects are often understudied for wildfires because measurements are difficult to obtain. Aims. This study aimed to investigate the relative contribution of pre-fire conditions to fire energy and the role of fire advancement direction in fuel consumption. Methods. Over 15 years, we measured vegetation and fuels in California mixed-conifer forests within days before and after wildfires, with...

Disturbances change our forests. However, we are only just beginning to explore how disturbances can affect each another or how they might be "linked." By understanding disturbance links, we may be able manipulate one forest disturbance to manage another.

The wildland–urban interface (WUI) is where buildings and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle1,2. It is where human–environmental conflicts and risks can be concentrated, including the loss of houses and lives to wildfire, habitat loss and fragmentation and the spread of zoonotic diseases3. However, a global analysis of the WUI has been lacking. Here, we present a global map of the 2020 WUI at 10 m resolution using a globally consistent and validated approach based on remote sensing-derived datasets of building area4 and wildland vegetation5. We show that the WUI is a global phenomenon,...

The Landsat multispectral time series is a valuable source of moderate spatial resolution data to support forest mapping and monitoring tasks. Using United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plots within the states of Michigan, Oregon, and West Virginia, two methods to summarize time series observations, harmonic regression coefficients and Global Land Analysis & Discovery (GLAD) Phenology metrics, are compared for predicting forest community type, total aboveground live biomass (AGLBM), and species-specific AGLBM. Harmonic regression...

Tree planting is increasingly being adopted as a strategy to address global change, including mitigation, adaptation, and restoration. Although reforestation has long been central to forest management, the desired outcomes of traditional and emerging tree-planting strategies face barriers linked to a lack of ecological diversity in forest nurseries. In the present article, we outline how insufficient diversity in nursery seedlings among species, genotypes, and stock types has impeded and will continue to hinder the implementation of diverse ecological or climate-suitable planting targets,...

Global change is reshaping climatic conditions at a tempo that exceeds natural migration rates for most tree species. As climate change amplifies the disparity between species' adaptive capacity and local climates, tree populations risk becoming geographically stranded in increasingly unsuitable conditions. This mismatch may cause catastrophic losses of key forest ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration, habitat provisioning, and forest products. In response, forest managers and researchers are developing a suite of climate-adaptive strategies designed to sustain forest diversity...

We analyzed over 8 decades of change in forest composition (represented by species proportion of basal area) and size class from more than 400 permanent plots located on the Bartlett Experimental Forest in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. These data represent one of the longest-term landscape-scale records of forest change based on permanent plots in North America. We analyzed the plots based on elevation class, land type indicating assumed successional direction (grouped into coniferous and deciduous), and inventory period within managed and unmanaged portions of the forest. An...

Vacant and abandoned buildings are common features in many post-industrial US cities, and are consistent predictors of violence. Demolition programs are regularly employed as an urban land use policy to stabilize housing markets and mitigate public health problems including violence. The objective of this research was to examine the effect of vacant building removals on violent and property crimes in Baltimore, MD from 2014 to 2019. We conducted a differencein- differences analysis using spatio-temporal Bayesian mixed models on six crime types on block faces with and without building...

Together, forests and freshwater ecosystems provide many services that people rely on such as erosion and flood control, carbon sequestration, drinking water, wildlife habitat, and recreation. Scientists are trying to understand how climate change is altering the composition and functioning of these complex and critical systems.

Tropical peatlands are one of the largest natural sources of atmospheric methane (CH4) and play a significant role in regional and global carbon budgets. However, large uncertainties persist regarding their feedbacks to climate variations. The Energy Exascale Earth System Model (E3SM) Land Model (ELM) is an ongoing state-of-the-science model, which has developed new representations of soil hydrology and biogeochemistry and includes a new microbial-functional-group-based CH4 module. This model has been tested in boreal forest peatlands, but has not yet been evaluated for simulating energy...