Treesearch

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...

A central goal of carbon (C) management and a critical outcome of sustainable land stewardship is reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from agriculture, forestry, and other land uses. Integrating GHG considerations into management can take many forms, but C credit markets are increasingly providing sources of private capital to offset the often high costs of stewardship. In Hawaiʻi, participation in voluntary C credit markets and the establishment of jurisdictional compliance C markets are constrained by a lack of institutional capacity, successful demonstrations, and high-quality data,...

The critical zone (CZ), extending from the vegetation canopy to the base of weathered material or depth of groundwater, hosts coupled hydrologic, geochemical, and biological interactions that regulate soil health, water resources, and ecosystem sustainability. The subsurface CZ can extend tens to hundreds of metres below the surface and is largely inaccessible, except in happenstance exposures from quarries or road cuts through mountain hillsides. Drilling and subsequent borehole sampling, monitoring, and imaging reveal the importance of the deep subsurface for CZ evolution and function....

We combine Indigenous and Western scientific ontologies to explore the deep history of pinyon pine in the Holocene Great Basin. We address 61 Theft of Pine Nuts (TPN) oral histories transcribed over the last 152 years. Contemporary Paiute, Shoshone, and Wá∙šiw storytellers still tell these narratives, which five Indigenous coauthors heard growing up. Considered judiciously and in concert with independent corroboration, these traditional oral histories (often dismissed as “myths”) potentially convey significant historical landmarks. Four themes emerge: (1) pine nuts have been a driving...

In historically frequent fire forests, wildfires are burning larger areas and driving forest loss across western North America, yet they also produce extensive low- to moderate-severity effects that can be leveraged to harden landscapes against future high-severity fire. Here, we operationalize prior conceptual calls by presenting a framework that identifies opportunities to leverage recent wildfire footprints via three management pathways to increasing resistance to high-severity fire: create (use burned edges as containment lines to treat adjacent unburned forest), enhance (apply...

Tree planting is a key strategy for the adaptation of cities to climate change. However, cities in semi-arid and Mediterranean climates struggle to sustain tree growth, often relying on irrigation systems. Literature suggests that irrigation enhances tree growth and ecosystem service provision at the cost of structural and physiological adjustments that can lead to lower wood density, compromising tree’s mechanical stability and pathogen resistance. Yet, the response of trees to irrigation is species dependent, raising uncertainty about its possible costs and benefits. We investigate how...