Treesearch

Seeking to understand controllable stand structure drivers of high burn severity, contingent on weather, 35 candidate predictors were derived from Forest Inventory and Analysis observations and ancillary data on managerially uncontrollable factors—fire history, climate, weather, and topography—within California’s massive 2021 Dixie fire. Logistic regression models were fitted to evaluate the effects of these predictors, with remotely sensed burn severity as the response. Using multiple model selection strategies to choose from among parsimonious predictor subsets that we structured to...

Many ectothermic vertebrates have predictable seasonal activity and habitat use patterns, but variable patterns at fine temporal scales (e.g., minutes to days) that are likely influenced by thermoregulatory demands on behavior. Wood turtles (Glyptemys insculpta) are freshwater turtles known to use terrestrial environments during their active period. However, little research has been conducted to quantify the influence of environmental factors on diel habitat use patterns. We used fine-resolution global positioning system (GPS) tracking and temperature data to quantify wood turtle aquatic-te...

Invasive predators can reshape native predator assemblages, triggering cascading changes in broader wildlife communities. In western North America, the barred owl (Strix varia) is an invasive apex predator with well-documented negative impacts on congeneric northern spotted owls (Strix occidentalis caurina), but impacts on other native forest owls are poorly understood. We coupled a large-scale removal experiment with a passive acoustic monitoring network to quantify species-specific and community-level responses of a five-species assemblage of native forest owls to the lethal removal of...

Public forests offer a variety of outdoor recreation activities that enhance participants’ well-being, yet participation remains low among ethnic minorities in the United States. These groups face multiple barriers, including limited information, transportation and financial constraints, safety concerns, fear of discrimination, and wildlife-related anxieties, which are often shaped by broader structural and cultural contexts. While understanding of these barriers is improving, gaps persist in conceptualizing the cognitive, social, and structural factors that influence forest recreation...

Adoption of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) in 1994 marked a pivotal moment in federal forest management in the Pacific Northwest, shifting focus away from intensive timber harvest toward an ecosystem management approach that emphasized late successional and old forest habitat with the creation of a reserve network across moist and dry forest zones. Thirty years after implementation, concerns over accelerating wildfire threats have prompted efforts to adapt the Plan to a warming climate, yet the actual effects of recent fires on NWFP forests are not well understood. In this study, we...

Climate change may affect the distribution and performance of many high latitude species. Plants producing fleshy, edible fruits are ecologically, economically, and socially important components of Alaskan forests, but the potential impacts of climate change on their regional distribution and local abundance remain largely unknown. This study investigated how climate change may impact the regional occupancy and local abundance of blueberry (Vaccinium alaskaenseand V. ovalifolium) and salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) in Southeast Alaskan forests and evaluated environmental correlates of...

U.S. laws and policies have implicitly and explicitly sought to use forests to benefit the nation and adjacent rural communities through a social contract, whereby forest harvest supports community stability. However, the forest industry in the Pacific Northwest experienced a supply shock in the 1990s with the reduction in federal harvest and the creation of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), which occurred against a backdrop of changing investments across the forest and broader manufacturing industries. This study gathers, queries, and analyzes data from multiple sources to examine how...

Black ash (Fraxinus nigra) wetlands in the northern US Lake States are threatened by emerald ash borer (EAB), with the impacts expected to be severe because of the foundational role of this species in controlling ecosystem functions. Underplanting before mortality from EAB is one approach being considered to replace black ash and maintain ecosystem functions. We report on third-year survival and growth responses of five underplanted tree species (red maple, silver maple, American elm, balsam poplar, and swamp white oak), to differences in seedling stock size, understory competition, and...

The natural environment is integral to supporting healthy and resilient communities. Community forests (CFs) are forested parcels, typically in rural areas, where community members have access, share governance, and receive various benefits. While considerable research demonstrates that urban parks and forests are important for human health, similar assessments are less available for CFs specifically. Although CFs exist in multiple countries, their policy, ecological, ownership, and governance contexts differ significantly. This review focuses on CFs in the United States. The goals of this...

Aquatic invasive species can devastate native biodiversity and human water infrastructure. Effective eradication relies on early detection. However, commonly used visual surveys are ineffective for detection of small populations of submerged invasive species in large water bodies. Here, we explored detection of invasive aquatic plants, animals (vertebrate and invertebrate), and pathogens using 10 environmental DNA (eDNA) water sampling events every two weeks between June and October, 2018, informing ideal sampling times for long-term early-detection monitoring. The highest number of...