Treesearch

Forested landscapes around the world face ever growing challenges in restoring resilience in the face of climate change. Large-scale disturbances, including wildfires and insect infestations, continue to grow in magnitude and destructiveness. Wildfires specifically pose major risks to human life and wellbeing. At the same time, forested landscapes produce innumerable benefits for society, including climate regulation through carbon sequestration, recreational opportunities, water provisioning, wood products, and more. The continued and reliable provisioning of these benefits relies on...

Maintaining and promoting forest ecosystem health and landscape management is a global challenge, given the social, ecological, and economic value of forests, the threats that they face from climate change and other stressors, and the substantial funding gap relative to the need to accomplish management objectives. The practice of calculating an economic Return on Investment (ROI) in business applications has migrated to conservation and land management planning as a means of informing and improving the positive impact of investments on forested landscapes. Forest management yields a large...

Wildfires adjacent to highly populated Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) areas are increasingly impacting urban communities in terms of post-fire costs and displacement of populations. But community perception of these socioeconomic and ecological costs, or ecosystem disservices (EDs), before catastrophic events like the 2025 Los Angeles Fires is little understood. Thus, understanding how experts and the urban public perceive fire-related EDs, relative to the risk reduction benefits of prescribed fire, is key. We used a 2023 survey (n= 869) from communities within Greater Los Angeles as well...

National Grasslands offer a variety of ecosystem services that benefit visitors and must be managed to ensure sustained yield. However, a paucity of visitor use management research in National Grasslands has limited the advancement of knowledge about these areas. This exploratory study used a mixed methodology with two connected phases to better understand visitor experiences, perceptions, and enjoyment at Cimarron National Grassland. A survey instrument was constructed with information gathered by semi-structured interviews with managers. The survey was distributed online through the...

Background: Prescribed burning is an important silvicultural tool used to reduce wildfire hazard by removing accumulated forest floor debris to improve wildlife habitat and to mimic the natural role of fire in the environment. Ladder fuels, which provide vertical fuel continuity between ground and crown fuels, pose a risk to the use of prescribed burning by increasing the likelihood that a surface fire may spread vertically resulting in undesirable fire behavior and unplanned fire effects. To minimize this risk, an improved understanding of the ignition criteria of ladder fuels is essential...

Western U.S. public forest managers are applying structurally complex treatments not only to restore established mature stands, but to juvenile and reforested stands through practices such as cluster planting. Although studies suggest that structural complexity may negatively impact productivity and ecosystem services throughout stand development, findings are inconsistent. The inconsistencies may reflect a) the structural complexity attributes investigated, b) focusing on tree growth without recruitment or mortality, and/or c) unidentified site quality and stand factors that modulate...

Urban trees are vital components of urban societies and ecosystems, but their management is often contested by diverse and sometimes conflicting goals. As storm frequency and intensity increases, it is important to understand the factors that impact municipal level proactive and reactive storm responses to urban trees including pruning, removal, and emergency procedures. Therefore, we surveyed 920 urban forestry professionals in the Northeastern and Southeastern United States to assess their perceived storm threats, socio-demographic characteristics and whether their affiliated organization...

Uromycladium falcatarium is a gall-forming rust fungus that causes highly damaging disease on Falcataria moluccana in commercial plantations in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. Falcataria moluccana is also an invasive weed that threatens infrastructure and native ecosystems in many Pacific Islands, including Hawaii, and is currently a target for biological control using host-specific natural enemies. Some Uromycladium species have been successfully used as biological controls for certain Acacia weeds. We conducted artificial inoculations to determine the ability of U. falcatarium...

When recreationists encounter negative site conditions, they may cope via displacement and choose alternative experiences to still attain the recreation outcomes they seek. Displacement may differ across demographics, but little is known about differences across social identities based in race/ethnicity, household composition, and generations in the U.S. Our research examines drivers and types of displacement and how these may vary based on social identity. We surveyed Southern Californians residing near one of four national forests in the area (n=3,585) about their visitor use patterns,...

Forest ecosystems are ecologically, socially, and culturally valuable, and are essential to global sustainability, yet climate change and altered disturbance regimes are threatening the future of forests around the globe. Policies and regulations pertaining to forest conservation require reliable and informative measures of condition and management effectiveness to sustain these investments, but standardized methods for characterizing management impacts on multiple ecological resources are still lacking. Composite indicators provide a promising approach for quantifying forest resilience...