Treesearch

Falcataria falcata, until recently known as Falcataria moluccanaand commonly known as albizia, is a large, fast-growing tree native to the Malaysian peninsula, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands. It has been introduced to, and become naturalized in, continental Africa, Asia, and many Caribbean and Pacific Islands. F. falcatais an early successional pioneer species that typically establishes via purposeful plantings. It readily spreads and outcompetes other tree species as a function of its symbiotic nitrogen-fixing capacity, copious long-lived seedbanks, and rapid growth...

Accurate representation of the location and amount of burned areas is vital to the understanding of patterns and impacts of fires. Some extant burned area maps appear to have high commission errors, which lead to an overrepresentation of burned area. The primary research objective of this study was to assess whether region-specific training data used for machine learning routines improve accuracy of burned area products for western San Diego County. We used training data derived from fine-scale aerial orthoimagery to create and compare three training sets, each with a different Landsat...

In forest ecosystems, the interplay among plant-driven processes and anthropogenic activities profoundly influences water balance dynamics. Hydraulic redistribution is one plant-driven process that can provide a large proportion of a plant's daily water. However, critical gaps exist in our knowledge of hydraulic redistribution including how forest management processes, like thinning, and site-specific factors like basal area and hillslope position, may affect it. To address these gaps, we used hourly volumetric water content measurements from 2016 to 2021 from four sub-watersheds in a...

Mangroves can increase their elevation relative to tidal flooding through biogeomorphic feedbacks but can submerge if rates of sea-level rise are too great. There is an urgent need to understand the vulnerability of mangroves to sea-level rise so local communities and resource managers can implement and prioritize actions. The need is especially pressing for small islands, which have been identified as an area of concern by the IPCC. We developed a generalizable modeling framework for tidal wetlands (WARMER-3) that accounts for species interactions and the belowground processes that...

1. Tropical forest understories tend to be light-limited. The red-to-far-red ratio (R:FR) is a useful and reliable index of light quality and its spatial variability can influence competition between native and non-native seedlings. While per cent light transmittance has been quantified in some Hawaiian lowland wet forests (HLWF), no information exists on how the spatial distribution of understorey light varies in relation to species invasion, or if patterns of seedling regeneration and light are linked. 2. We measured the R:FR of light in the understorey to assess light quality in three...

Southeast Asian (SEA) mangroves are globally recognized as blue carbon hotspots. Methodologies that measure mangrove soil carbon stock (SCS) are either accurate but costly (i.e., elemental analyzers), or economical but less accurate (i.e., loss-on-ignition [LOI]). Most SEA countries estimate SCS by measuring soil organic matter (OM) through the LOI method then converting it into organic carbon (OC) using a conventional conversion equation (%Corg = 0.415 * % LOI + 2.89, R2 = 0.59, n = 78) developed from Palau mangroves. The local site conditions in Palau does not reflect the wide range of...

Climate change is motivating a reassessment of how seeds are selected for reforestation, as rapid environmental change can lead to local maladaptation in trees. Genetic association studies and past seed source climate both have the potential to help identify appropriate planting stock, but these techniques have not been compared and tested as part of an operational planting program. In this study, we combined an analysis of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with environmental gradients in sugar pine (Pinus lambertiana) with an analysis of post-fire seedling survival and...

City leaders are setting ambitious plans to achieve critical urban sustainability goals such as reducing urban heat, mitigating flooding during storms, and conserving biodiversity, and increasingly rely on urban forests as a key nature-based solution to such challenges. Current paradigms of urban forest management typically prioritize goals like increasing tree canopy cover that are often viewed as proxies for increased ecosystem service provision, in a general sense. However, urban foresters, the professionals with responsibility to manage urban forests, are increasingly faced with the...

Mountain meadows are ecologically important groundwater dependent ecosystems that retain and store water in upland forested landscapes. They tend to occur in low gradient, broad valleys where water slows and sediment accumulates, making them efficient locations for restoration. Over a century and a half of land use has degraded many meadows in the Sierra Nevada, reducing their hydrological and ecological functionality. Process-based restoration (PBR) is an ecosystem rehabilitation approach that utilises biogeomorphic processes to facilitate functional ecosystem recovery. Low-tech applicatio...

John C. Frémont became “almost obsessed” with piñon pine during his wintertime traverse of the Sierra Nevada in January of 1844. Purchasing a skin bag with a few pounds of pine nuts from local Indians, he found that “when roasted, their pleasant flavor made them an agreeable addition to our now scanty store of provisions." Although the existence of junipers was well known at the time, Frémont soon would bring piñon pine to the attention of the scientific community, formally recording the name Pinus monophylla in his journal.