Treesearch

Forest treatments reduce wildfire risk and can promote the vigor and production of remaining trees, but they are also a disturbance. Understanding the type, timing, and longevity of tree response to treatment, as well as the potential for interactive effects of treatments and drought, could help managers plan and evaluate forest management practices. Environmental drivers, biological modifiers, and tree capacity to respond to prior disturbances were concurrently tested to predict ponderosa pine basal area increment (ΒΑΙ) in a lowland and upland dry pine forest in south central Oregon, USA....

Tree mortality in Sierra Nevada’s 2012–2015 drought was unexpectedly excessive: ~152 million trees died. The relative performance of five drought indices (DIs: SPEI, AI, PDSI, scPDSI, and PHDI) was evaluated in the complex, upland terrain which supports the forest and supplies 60% of Californian water use. We tested the relative performance of DIs parameterized with on-site and modeled (PRISM) meteorology using streamflow (linear correlation), and modeled forest stand NDVI and tree basal area increment (BAI) with current and lagged year DI. For BAI, additional co-variates that could modify...

We used numerical modelling to explore the role of the vertical compartmentalization of hillslopes on groundwater flow and recession discharge. We found that, when hydraulic properties are vertically compartmentalized, streamflow recession behaviour may strongly deviate from what is predicted by groundwater theory that considers the drainage of shallow reservoirs with homogeneous properties. We further identified the hillslope configurations for which the homogeneous theory derived from the Boussinesq solution approximately holds and, conversely, for those for which it does not. By...

Plant communities are predicted to be more resistant to invasion if they are highly productive, harbor species with similar functional traits to invaders, or support species with high competitive potential. However, the strength of competition may decrease with increasing abiotic stress if species more heavily invest in traits that confer stress tolerance over competitive ability, potentially influencing community trait–resistance relationships. Recent research examining how community traits influence invasion resistance has been predominantly focused on single vegetation types, and...

The Earth’s climate is warming most rapidly in the high latitudes of the polar and subpolar regions. Winter temperatures, in particular, are increasing.This trend is being observed in Alaska’s Copper River Delta, where scientists Steve Wondzell, Gordon Reeves, and Luca Adelfio conducted a multiyear study on the effects of changing stream temperatures on the incubation duration and emergence times of coho salmon.During their 5-year study, winter conditions shifted from cold and snowy to cool and rainy. Modeling results showed that this would dramatically change the incubation time of coho...

Aim: Anticipating when and where changes in species' demographic rates will lead to range shifts in response to changing climate remains a major challenge. Despite evidence of increasing mortality in dry forests across the globe in response to drought and warming temperatures, the overall impacts on the distribution of dry forests are largely unknown because we lack comparable large-scale data on tree recruitment rates. Here, our aim was to develop range-wide population models for dry forest tree species (pinyon pine and juniper), quantifying both mortality and recruitment, to better...

We demonstrate the potential for pushbroom Digital Aerial Photogrammetry (DAP) to enhance forest modeling (and mapping) over large areas, especially when combined with multitemporal Landsat derivatives. As part of the National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP), high resolution (30–60 cm) photogrammetric forest structure measurements can be acquired at low cost (as low as $0.23/km2 when acquired for entire states), repeatedly (2–3 years), over the entire conterminous USA. Our three objectives for this study are to: (1) characterize agreement between DAP measurements with Landsat and...

Climate change is contributing to biodiversity redistributions and species declines. However, cooler microclimate conditions provided by old-growth forest structures compared with surrounding open or younger forests have been hypothesized to provide thermal refugia for species that are sensitive to climate warming and dampen the negative effects of warming on population trends of animals (i.e., the microclimate buffering hypothesis). In addition to thermal refugia, the compositional and structural diversity of old-growth forest vegetation itself may provide resources to species that are...

A fundamental question of forestry is that of species composition: which species are present, and which are not. However, traditional forest measurements needed to map species over large areas can be both time consuming and costly. In this study, we combined airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data with extensive field data from the Long-Term Ecosystem Productivity study located near Sappho,Washington, USA to increase the accuracy of our GIS data and to differentiate between red alder (Alnus rubra Bong.) and other dominant tree species. We adjusted plot and tree locations using...

There is considerable interest in multiaged management as a silvicultural and restoration tool in redwood forests of California. For multiaged silviculture to be successful, a new cohort of trees must first be able to regenerate underneath the residual overstory. We used annual re-measurement data from a replicated manipulative experiment in coastal northern California to determine how understory light, stand density, and spatial arrangement of residual trees affected coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and tanoak (Notholithocarpus densiflorus) stump sprouts regenerating after partial...