Treesearch

Natural area management and sustainability in cities is ever more reliant on civic environmental stewardship. Many conservation organizations sponsor stewardship programs that enlist volunteers to care for the land and restore urban ecosystems. Stewardship program success depends on alignment of individuals’ and sponsoring organizations’ goals. We conducted surveys with a sample of 165 volunteers across natural areas stewardship events in metropolitan King County (Washington, U.S.). An adapted Volunteer Functions Inventory framework was used to understand volunteers’ motivations, satisfacti...

Fire has been an important catalyst of change in Pacific Northwest forests throughout the Holocene. The role of fire varied across this biophysically diverse region prior to European colonization, but fire exclusion and logging drastically altered forest conditions during the 19th and 20th centuries. Despite recent increases in area burned and several large wildfires with devastating social and economic consequences, area burned in recent decades remains far less than under historical regimes across most of the region. Some dry forest landscapes have experienced profound change through...

The chapter explores a series of overlapping discussions from the 1960s to the mid-1970s concerning the need to preserve natural areas for ecological research and observation, as well as the need for ecologists to be advocates for ecological science in the light of modern environmental problems. The U.S. Forest Service was also actively promoting the creation of Research Natural Areas and making them available for ecological research. A report prepared under the auspices of The Institute of Ecology in the mid-1970s drew attention to the desirability of creating a large network of experiment...

This chapter investigates how the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program has changed from 1980 to 2018. The LTER program is designed to balance persistence with response to change in science, society, and ecosystems through renewable 6-year grants subjected to peer review at the midterm and at renewal. The LTER program had an initial period of rapid growth with some terminations (1980s), a middle period of slower growth with no terminations (1990–2010), and a third period of no net growth, with added and terminated sites and an accelerated rate of...

A broad spectrum of arts and humanities activities has emerged organically within the Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program including disciplines such as philosophy and ethics, creative writing, and the visual, multimedia, musical, and performing arts. The majority of LTER sites now hosts activities that integrate the environmental sciences with the arts and humanities (eSAH). These programs serve important functions central to the LTER mission, including, but not limited to, public engagement, outreach, and education. Some LTER eSAH programs additionally consider these activities...

This chapter describes the evolution of information management protocols for Long Term Ecological Research, starting with work conducted at the Andrews Forest Long Term Ecological Research site in Oregon in the 1980s. This early work involved the design, testing, and implementation of a data and information management system that helped establish standards and protocols across the Long Term Ecological Research Network. Following this initial work, a growth period ensued. The chapter discusses the creation of Ecological Metadata Language, explores the impact of the internet on ecological...

Long-term, place-based research programs in the National Science Foundation-supported Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network have had profound effects on public policies and practices in land use, conservation, and the environment. While less well known than their contributions to fundamental ecological science, LTER programs’ commitment to serving broad public interests has been key to helping achieve their mission to advance basic science that supports society’s need to address major environmental challenges. Several attributes of all LTER programs are critical to these accomplishme...

Global increases in intensive forestry have raised concerns about forest plantation effects on water, but few studies have tested the effects of plantation forest removal and native forest restoration on catchment hydrology. We describe results of a 14-year paired watershed experiment on ecological restoration in south central Chile which documents streamflow response to the early stages of native forest restoration, after clearcutting of plantations of exotic fast-growing Eucalyptus, planting of native trees, and fostering natural regeneration of native temperate rainforest species....

Few long-term studies have explored how intensively managed short rotation forest plantations interact with climate variability. We examine how prolonged severe drought and forest operations affect runoff in 11 experimental catchments on private corporate forest land near Nacimiento in south central Chile over the period 2008–2019. The catchments (7.7–414 ha) contain forest plantations of exotic fast-growing species (Pinus radiata, Eucalyptus spp.) at various stages of growth in a Mediterranean climate (mean long-term annual rainfall = 1381 mm). Since 2010, a drought, unprecedented in...

Woody detritus (WD), created by mortality of trees and their associated parts, is an important component of forested ecosystems with roles in energy flow, hydrologic and geomorphologic processes as well as in carbon and nutrient cycling. Although likely to be increasingly important as forest systems respond to climatic and other human induced changes, WD-related science is just beginning relative to other aspects of forested ecosystems. WD differs from other litter forms and soil in key ways (i.e., size range, rigidity, and heterogeneity) that limit the application of many paradigms...