Treesearch

We tested the effect of biochar application on growth of planted jack pine on a sandy soil in northern Minnesota. Biochar was applied in combination with compost and with or without manual irrigation in a factorial design to isolate possible effects associated with nutrient or water availability. There were no differences among treatments in seedling annual diameter or height growth after 4 years. Watering increased mean needle mass, indicating the treatment was somewhat effective at increasing water availability and seedling performance. Watering increased foliage Mg and K concentrations...

We assess the vulnerability of seven Alaska Native tribes in the Chugach region, which includes Prince William Sound (tribes in Chenega, Cordova, Qutekcak [Seward], Tatitlek, and Valdez) and the adjoining Kenai Peninsula (Nanwalek and Port Graham), to key climate and nonclimate stressors. This report supplements the interagency Climate Change Vulnerability Assessment for the Chugach National Forest and the Kenai Peninsula that was published in 2017. Over the next 50 years, all communities are generally expected to experience higher temperatures, with decreasing snowpack along the coast...

Mentoring is important to career development and employee morale of public sector employees, but little is known about how employee mentoring needs change over the course of one’s career or at different job classification levels. An online survey about the mentoring needs of 251 aquatic professionals in the USDA Forest Service was conducted in 2019. Quantitative data were analyzed across three federal employee grade levels and four career stages. This study found that grade levels influenced the type of skills employees seek to develop and the attributes associated with successful mentoring...

This report is a synthesis of current harvested wood product (HWP) carbon models available for use in the United States and Canada. As local, state, and national entities develop forest management objectives that address climate change mitigation, there is a need to consider the short- and long-term fate of carbon in HWPs. The goals of this synthesis were to (1) review and synthesize the functionality of current HWP carbon models; (2) describe the role of life-cycle assessment (LCA) to estimate overall greenhouse gas (GHG) implications of using HWPs instead of alternative nonwood materials...

The Lookout Mountain Thinning and Fuels Reduction Study is an operational-scale, long-term management experiment to evaluate the effectiveness of silvicultural treatments to mitigate fire risk and the associated implications for ecological processes and functions. The study is being conducted within the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest, which encompasses about 1019 ha of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and mixed-conifer forest originating predominantly from an 1845 wildfire. Study treatments include four levels of overstory thinning, each followed by mastication of understory vegetation...

Satellite-based forest alert systems are an important tool for ecosystem monitoring, planning conservation, and increasing public awareness of forest cover change. Continuous monitoring in tropical regions, such as those experiencing pronounced monsoon seasons, can be complicated by spatially extensive and persistent cloud cover. One solution is to use Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) imagery acquired by the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-1A and B satellites. The Sentinel 1A and B satellites acquire C-band radar data that penetrates cloud cover and can be acquired during the day or night....

Urban-forestry research can seem far removed from the on-the-ground realities of planting and maintaining urban trees. How can obtuse articles published in obscure journals help get more trees in the ground? Some scientists think that the opposite is also true: urban-forestry practitioners have little to contribute to new research. We believe that both views are short sighted and fail to see opportunities for mutually-beneficial collaboration between urban-forestry practice and research. The purpose of this article is to showcase an example of a successful collaboration between researchers...

Invasive predators can alter ecosystem function and be detrimental to native wildlife by direct predation and through exploitative and interference competition. Barred owls (Strix varia), a native species in eastern North America, have expanded their range to Pacific Northwest forests, threatening native owls and community dynamics. The western screech-owl (Megascops kennicottii) is a species of conservation concern, and the apparent population decline coincides with the arrival of barred owls. We collected data in 2021 under a broad scale passive acoustic monitoring program at 2482...

As contemporary wildfire activity intensifies across the western United States, there is increasing recognition that a variety of forest management activities are necessary to restore ecosystem function and reduce wildfire hazard in dry forests. However, the pace and scale of current, active forest management is insufficient to address restoration needs. Managed wildfire and landscape-scale prescribed burns hold potential to achieve broad-scale goals but may not achieve desired outcomes where fire severity is too high or too low. To explore the potential for fire alone to restore dry...

The epiphytic lichen Letharia vulpina has been commonly sampled in-situ for nitrogen (N) deposition biomonitoring studies but has never before been transplanted for this purpose. In the high-elevation wilderness areas of southern California Letharia vulpina is generally uncommon, making in-situ sampling difficult. In this study, we compared thallus N accumulation between in-situ Letharia vulpina reference samples from the relatively low N deposition environment of the northern Sierra Nevada mountains and Letharia vulpina transplants that were deployed at nine plots of varying climatic and...