Treesearch

Emerald ash borer (EAB) (Agrilus planipennis) has had an extensive impact across North America. It is currently present in Minnesota, USA but has not been observed in northern portions of the state where the vast majority of black ash (Fraxinus nigra) trees are located. Unlike other ash forest communities, the black ash forest type occurs in wetlands and is dominated by black ash with few associate species. Because of this, the loss of black ash can result in changes to the hydrological regime and species composition. The goal of this study was to quantify the structure and composition of...

Scotch broom (Cytisus scoparius (L.) Link) is a highly competitive, nonnative, leguminous shrub species of major concern in coast Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco var. menziesii) forests of the Pacific Northwest that has potential to impact long-term soil productivity. We conducted a bioassay to assess the potential for legacy effects on soils (e.g., soil nutrient effects, soil seedbank, etc.) following Scotch broom removal and the potential for recovery over time. The bioassay was conducted using glacial-outwash soils from an existing Long-Term Soil Productivity study...

Across the American West, forests have diverse owners and are managed for different goals. But when wildfire ignites on one parcel—whether managed by the USDA Forest Service, a corporation, a tribe, or a family forest land owner—all neighbors are at risk. Fire doesn’t respect property boundaries.For the past decade, the Forest Service has been promoting an “all-lands” approach that advocates cross-boundary cooperation to reduce fire danger across landscapes with multiple owners. In 2014, the Joint Chiefs’ Landscape Restoration Partnership—a cooperative venture between the Forest Service...

A common goal of biological adaptation planning is to identify and prioritize locations that remain suitably cool during the summer. This implicitly devalues areas that are ephemerally warm, even if they are suitable most of the year for mobile animals. Here we develop an alternative conceptual framework, the growth regime, which considers seasonal and landscape variation in physiological performance, focusing on riverine fish. Using temperature models for 14 river basins, we show that growth opportunities propagate up and down river networks on a seasonal basis, and that downstream...

Changes in land use over the past century have contributed to substantial losses of longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) woodlands in the southeastern USA and replacement with higher density, mixed pine and hardwood stands that suppress understory development and limit application of prescribed fire. To increase understanding of limiting factors and identify potential approaches for restoring longleaf pine woodlands, we studied initial availability of light and soil water and 2-year (2018–2019) plant community responses after controlling overstory hardwoods in five remnant longleaf pine...

Biosecurity and decontamination procedures for herpetofaunal conservation fall into several broad categories . This corresponds to the multifaceted decontamination approach tied to the stages of pathogen emergence (pre-arrival, invasion front, epidemic and establishment), and the intertwining contexts of natural resource management activities, the human dimension of transmission of novel pathogens, and integrated biodiversity conservation practices. Standard field-hygiene protocols generally aim to reduce the likelihood of human-mediated spread of disease-causing pathogens or invasive...

Ventenata (Ventenata dubia L.) is an invasive annual grass that has rapidly expanded its range across temperate grassland and shrub-steppe ecosystems in western North America. However, there is little published regarding its ecology, especially its relationship with fire on rangelands. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of fire on ventenata invasion in the Pacific Northwest Bunchgrass (PNB) Prairie. Given the influence of fire on the invasion of other annual grasses such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.), we expected that fire would facilitate the spread and increase in...

Western Snowy Plovers (Charadrius nivosus nivosus) are federally listed under the US Endangered Species Act as Threatened. They occur along the US Pacific coastline and are threatened by habitat loss and destruction and excessive levels of predation and human disturbance. Populations have been monitored since the 1970s for distribution, reproduction, and survival. Since the species was federally listed in 1993 and a recovery plan was approved under the US Fish and Wildlife Service in 2007, recovery actions have resulted in growing populations with increased presence at breeding and...

The use of passive acoustic monitoring in wildlife ecology has increased dramatically in recent years as researchers take advantage of improvements in autonomous recording units and analytical methods. These technologies have allowed researchers to collect large quantities of acoustic data which must then be processed to extract meaningful information, e.g. target species detections. A persistent issue in acoustic monitoring is the challenge of efficiently automating the detection of species of interest, and deep learning has emerged as a powerful approach to accomplish this task. Here we...

The Douglas-fir tussock moth (DFTM) is a forest defoliating insect that is subject to periodic population outbreaks. These outbreaks are sometimes spatially synchronized across hundreds of kilometers. The DFTM’s complex population dynamics are thought to result primarily from two regimes of population control: at outbreak-level population densities, DFTM populations are subject to control by viral infection, whereas endemic-level insect densities are maintained by generalist predators. Generalist predation delays the onset of insect outbreaks. In this paper, we show that variation in...