Treesearch

Phenotypic plasticity of traits is commonly measured in plants to improve understanding of organismal and ecosystem responses to climate change but is far less studied for microbes. Specifically, decomposer fungi are thought to display high levels of phenotypic plasticity and their functions have important implications for ecosystem dynamics. Assessing the phenotypic plasticity of fungal traits may therefore be important for predicting fungal community response to climate change. Here, we assess the phenotypic plasticity of 15 fungal isolates (12 species) from a Southern California...

Background The 2018 Camp Fire, which destroyed 18,804 structures in northern California, including most of the town of Paradise, provided an opportunity to investigate housing arrangement and vegetation-related factors associated with home loss and determine whether California’s 2008 adoption of exterior building codes for homes located in the wildland-urban-interface (WUI) improved survival. We randomly sampled single-family homes constructed: before 1997, 1997 to 2007, and 2008 to 2018, the latter two time periods being before and after changes to the building code. We then quantified...

Globalization has undeniably impacted the Earth’s ecosystems, but it has also influenced how we think about natural systems. Three fourths of the world’s forests are now altered by human activity, which challenges our concepts of native ecosystems. The dichotomies of pristine vs. disturbed as well as our view of native and non-native species, have blurred; allowing us to acknowledge new paradigms about how humans and nature interact. We now understand that the use of militaristic language to define the perceived role of a plant species is holding us back from the fact that novel systems...

Many mammalian species have experienced range contractions. Following a reduction in distribution that has resulted in apparently small and disjunct populations, the Humboldt marten (Martes caurina humboldtensis) was recently designated as federally Threatened and state Endangered. This subspecies of Pacific marten occurring in coastal Oregon and northern California, also known as coastal martens, appear unlike martens that occur in snow-associated regions in that vegetation associations appear to differ widely between Humboldt marten populations. We expected current distributions represent...

Large high-severity fires are increasing in frequency in many parts of the world, including the coniferous forests of the Sierra Nevada mountains. These “megafires” alter vegetation and environmental conditions in forests, yet their impacts on native wildlife remain poorly understood. Bats play an important role in forest ecosystems, but their responses to megafires likewise are understudied. We investigated bat responses to the King Fire, a megafire that burned nearly 40,000 ha within the Eldorado National Forest in 2014, half of it at high severity. From June to September 2017, we used...

Widespread Phytophthorainfections have been discovered in nursery stock used in California restoration plantings. In response, Nursery PhytophthoraBest Management Practices (NPBMPs) designed to exclude Phytophthorafrom nursery plants were developed to address the need for clean planting stock in restoration projects. A pilot program to implement the systematic use of the NPBMPs, Accreditation to Improve Restoration (AIR), was developed and started in 2018. As of 2020, 13 northern California restoration nurseries have been evaluated, and five have met all the program requirements. In 564...

Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva D.K. Bailey) is a long-lived subalpine conifer native to the western United States. Bristlecone pine is considered a keystone species of high-elevation Great Basin sky island forests, yet detailed distribution data and information about constraining environmental factors for the species are lacking. We compiled a distribution dataset consisting of 490 individual bristlecone pine forest stands covering nearly 100,000 ha in Utah, Nevada, and California to enable improved monitoring of the species and enhanced understanding of forest succession...

Variations in hillslope soil moisture control forest hydrologic fluxes and storage pools, yet sparse observations combined with the complexity and heterogeneity of water movement and storage in the vadose zone can make temporal and spatial patterns and processes difficult to predict. We used two years of field observations of volumetric soil moisture at three depths (15, 30, and 100 cm) across five topographic positions (riparian, toeslope, sideslope, shoulder, and ridge) along three hillslope transects to better understand how soil moisture changes with hillslope position and through...

This chapter is a review and synthesis of research conducted at Hawai’i Experimental Tropical Forest (HETF) on stream nutrients and biological responses. It is intended to inform national and regional water quality regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Hawai’i Department of Land and Natural Resources (DLNR), about existing results of relevant scientific studies that are available at HETF, and to identify future field and synthetic research of potential use to regulatory agencies that might be conducted at HETF.

This chapter is a review and synthesis of research conducted in and adjacent to the San Dimas Experimental Forest (SDEF) on stream nutrients and biological responses to stream nutrients. It is intended to inform national and regional water quality regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the California Regional Water Quality Control Boards, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, about existing results of relevant scientific studies that are available at SDEF, and to identify future field and synthetic research of potential use to...