Treesearch

Urban forestry is the planning and management of trees, forests, and related vegetation within communities to creat or add value.

Charleston, a charming Southern city appreciated for its rich history and culture, maintains trees as an integral component of the urban infrastructure (Figure 1). Research indicates that healthy trees can lessen impacts associated with the built environment by reducing stormwater runoff, energy consumption, and air pollutants. Trees improve urban life, making Charleston a more enjoyable place to live, work, and play, while mitigating the city’s environmental impact. Over the years, the people of Charleston have invested millions of dollars in their municipal forest. The primary question...

Approximately 75–80% of the population of North America currently lives in urban areas as defined by national census bureaus, and urbanization is continuing to increase. Future trajectories of fossil fuel emissions are associated with a high degree of uncertainty; however, if the activities of urban residents and the rate of urban land conversion can be captured in urban systems models, plausible emissions scenarios from major cities may be generated. Integrated land use and transportation models that simulate energy use and traffic-related emissions are already in place in many North...

Albuquerque, a booming southwestern city appreciated for the beauty of its high desert surroundings and its bustling business culture maintains parks and natural areas as an integral component of the urban infrastructure (Figure 1). Recently, Albuquerque was honored by the Trust for Public Land for its excellent park system: it leads the nation in percentage of land protected as open space.

Although no mangrove species are native to the Hawaiian Archipelago, both (Rhizophora mangle) and (Bruguiera sexangula) were introduced and have become naturalized. (Rhizophora mangle) has spread to almost every major Hawaiian island, but (B. sexangula) has established only on Oʻahu, where it was intentionally introduced. To examine the possibility that differences in propagule characteristics maintain these patterns of distribution, we first reviewed the literature on surface currents around the Hawaiian Islands, which suggest that propagules ought to disperse frequently from one island...

In order to mobilise action against a social problem, public service communicators often include normative information in their persuasive appeals. Such messages can be either effective or ineffective because they can normalise either desirable or undesirable conduct. To examine the implications in an environmental context, visitors to Arizona's Petrified Forest National Park were exposed to messages that admonished against the theft of petrified wood. In addition, the messages conveyed information either about descriptive norms (the levels of others' behaviour) or injunctive norms (the...

Depreciative activities and high annual visitation levels threaten the health and sustainability of the giant Sequoia. Signage is one route to managing visitor behavior. Research suggests a two-by-two conceptualization of normative messages in signs. Messages may present the "ought" (injunctive) or the "is" (descriptive) of behavior and may be stated positively (prescriptive) or negatively (proscriptive). This paper summarizes findings from an experiment testing normative messages and presents evidence for injunctive-proscriptive messages as the most effective route in gaining desired...

We evaluated the abundance of nonnative plants on fuel breaks and in adjacent untreated areas to determine if fuel treatments promote the invasion of nonnative plant species. Understanding the relationship between fuel treatments and nonnative plants is becoming increasingly important as federal and state agencies are currently implementing large fuel treatment programs throughout the United States to reduce the threat of wildland fire. Our study included 24 fuel breaks located across the State of California. We found that nonnative plant abundance was over 200% higher on fuel breaks than...

In the Lake Tahoe Basin, the retention of native ecosystems within urban areas may greatly enhance the landscape’s ability to maintain biotic diversity. Our study of plant, invertebrate and vertebrate species showed that many native species were present in remnant forest stands in developed areas; however, their richness and abundance declined in association with increasing development across all taxonomic groups. Species richness for land birds and mammalian carnivores declined with development, whereas ant richness and small mammal abundance peaked at intermediate levels of development.Ve...

A wide variety of resource management activities can affect surface discharge in small streams. Often, the effects of variation in streamflow on fish survival and growth can be difficult to estimate because of possible confounding with the effects of other variables, such as water temperature and fish density. We measured the effect of streamflow on survival and growth of rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss in a small stream in northwestern California by manipulating the flow entering four of eight enclosed stream sections (9.0–15.3 m long) containing one pool and 2.5–4.0 m of upstream...