Treesearch

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.

Invasive omnivores may have profound impacts on ecological communities through diet selection, particularly when their functional roles differ from those in their native range. While the threat of feral pigs (Sus scrofa) to native plant communities in Hawai‘i is well known, their trophic dynamics and the drivers of variation in their diet remain understudied. We investigated the feral pig trophic niche on Hawai‘i Island using stable isotopes (13C and 15N) and Bayesian mixing models to identify drivers of variation in resource use. We also reconstructed intra-individual variability for six...

The overall objective of our study was to examine the influence of climatic factors and tree-based competition on the radial growth of jack pine (Pinus banksiana) forests affected by the fungal pathogen, Diplodia pinea. Our study utilized dendroclimatic techniques to examine how past annual diameter growth can be influenced by the historical climate of the region. Twenty jack pine sites were sampled in Michigan within the Upper Peninsula (UP) and the Lower Peninsula (LP) region. Furthermore, two condition levels of forest health (D. pinea-affected vs. healthy reference stands) were...

Terminology frames reality and affects how people perceive and respond to it. What makes the global climate situation concerning is not simply a change in climate, but the anthropogenic change, in addition to natural climate variations, occurring at a rapid rate relative to the pre-industrial era. However, in general language, “climate change” does not differentiate itself from natural climate variations nor reflect the rate of change. Based on theoretical reasoning, this paper argues that “climate upheaval” frames and communicates the global climate situation more informatively. This is...

Urban fires that result from wildfires are an emerging, extreme event affecting communities and urban forests globally. However, much of the fire effects on urban ecosystems literature is primarily focused on Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) areas, correlates of building loss, risk mitigation, and wildland vegetation and fuels. Three recent urban fires in California USA provided an opportunity to explore these effects on urban forests: the 2017 Tubbs (Santa Rosa) and Thomas (Ventura) fires and the 2018 Camp fire that burned Paradise. Accordingly, we analyzed pre- and post-fire neighborhood...

To celebrate the 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, a conference was held on the evolution of the Ecosystem Approach during the past half-century to learn how to enhance successful implementation of ecosystem-based approaches for resource management, conservation, and societal problems worldwide. Among several conference workshops, one focused on the origins and history of ecosystem approaches, which was attended by 14 researchers with global expertise in conservation biology, ecology, economics, ecosystem modeling, limnology, resource and ecosystem management, policymaking,...

In 2014, Phytophthora root rot was identified as a serious problem in nursery plants grown for habitat restoration in California. To support efforts to produce restoration nursery stock free of Phytophthora species, we developed a standardized leachate baiting method that can be conducted by nursery staff. Each plant in an array of up to 42 container-grown nursery plants is irrigated six times at 15-min intervals with a standardized water volume. Irrigation leachate is collected in a specialized vessel containing a green (unripe) pear bait. Test sensitivity was assessed using arrays of...

Indigenous Knowledge, Practice, and Belief Systems (IKPBS) are an ecological and cultural framework with which Indigenous communities have (and continue to) adaptively manage their land since time immemorial. In the current context of climate change and colonial forest and fire management in the western US, Indigenously-led ecological research and cultural revitalization offers a path forward where tribal sovereignty of land stewardship is maintained and the resiliency of natural systems are reestablished. We describe our process of developing an Indigenous-Directed Research (IDR) partnersh...

Background Understanding the role of fire in forested landscapes is fundamental to fire reintroduction efforts, yet few studies have examined how fire dynamics vary in response to interactions between local conditions, such as soil productivity, and more broadscale changes in climate. In this study, we examined historical fire frequency, seasonality, and spatial patterning in mixed conifer forests across a distinct gradient of soil productivity in the northern Sierra Nevada. We cross-dated 46 different wood samples containing 377 fire scars from 6 paired sites, located on and off of...

During the Holocene, singleleaf pinyon pine (Pinus monophylla) spread across the mid-elevations of the central Great Basin to define the so-called pinyon curtain that marks the current northerly limit of pinyon woodlands. At the same time, Indigenous communities also dispersed across these landscapes, leaving behind their Paleoindian roots along the low-lying pluvial lake margins to populate the adjacent uplands. Here, we explore ecological and archaeological perspectives and offer new hypotheses on the co-arrivals of people and pinyon throughout the central Great Basin. We test several...