Treesearch

Despite an increasingly ethnically and racially diverse population in the United States (U.S.), growing evidence indicates that minorities are underrepresented in national forest visitation. Many reasons for continuing underrepresentation have been examined, involving research reaching back multiple decades. In the current study, a random sample of residents (n = 1977) from four large metropolitan statistical areas in California was involved in a telephone survey about forest visitation. Analysis revealed a continuing pattern of inequities in lifetime visitation to a national forest, as...

This Special Issue addresses the intersections of outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and sustainability. Outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism provide essential benefits to individuals, communities, and society and thereby contribute to sustainability. Equitable provision of opportunities, cultural variations in desired experiences, barriers to outdoor recreation, and diverse perceptions of both nature and recreation add to the complexity in outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism service delivery. Outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism occur within a socioecological...

The ability of natural resource agencies to act before, during, and after outbreaks of conifer bark beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae) is important to ensure the continued provision of ecosystem services. Adaptive capacity refers to the capability of an agent or system to adapt to change, regardless of whether it is examined as an independent social or ecological entity, or as a coupled social–ecological system. Understanding the components of a disturbance and the associated effects to ecosystem services, social systems, and natural resource management increases the ability to adapt to...

The Mill Fire, which burned in north-western California during the summer of 2012, provided a unique research opportunity when firefighters implemented a backfiring operation to limit wildfire growth. This backfire was ignited and burned through research plots from a long-term study designed to determine the effects of tree density manipulation and shrub control on the growth and stand development of a ponderosa pine plantation. The objectives of this study were to examine the response of these 53-year-old trees to the backfire and to determine how the fire effects differed with plantation...

Why are some mammals more vulnerable to extinction than others? Past studies have explored many life history traits as correlates of extinction, but have not been successful at developing a unifed understanding of why some species become extinct while other species persist despite living at the same time, under similar conditions, and facing equivalent challenges. I propose that the lens of wildlife behavior may bring into focus a more comprehensive view of why some species have gone extinct while others persist. The fossil record has recorded extinction events over carnivoran history;...

A long history of tribal disenfranchisement through government policies has contributed to a lack of trust and participation by tribal communi­ties in nontribal organizations and initiatives. This article will discuss the process through which new partnerships were forged using a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach among university researchers, local nontribal organiza­tions, and three Tribes in the Klamath River Basin of southern Oregon and northern California through a five-year federal food security grant. The partnership’s shared goal was to enhance tribal health and...

Mangrove forests play an important role in climate change adaptation and mitigation by maintaining coastline elevations relative to sea level rise, protecting coastal infrastructure from storm damage, and storing substantial quantities of carbon (C) in live and detrital pools. Determining the efficacy of mangroves in achieving climate goals can be complicated by difficulty in quantifying C inputs (i.e., differentiating newer inputs from younger trees from older residual C pools), and mitigation assessments rarely consider potential offsets to CO2 storage by methane (CH4) production in...

Climate change over the next century is predicted to cause widespread maladaptation in natural systems. This prediction, as well as many sustainable management and conservation practices, assumes that species are adapted to their current climate. However, this assumption is rarely tested. Using a large-scale common garden experiment combined with genome-wide sequencing, we found that valley oak (Quercus lobata), a foundational tree species in California ecosystems, showed a signature of adaptational lag to temperature, with fastest growth rates occurring at cooler temperatures than...

Many wildlife species rely on unique features of trees during daily activities and fundamental parts of their life cycle. The fisher (Pekania pennanti) is a forest-dwelling carnivore of conservation concern in western North America that uses unique habitat elements as refuges during resting bouts and for reproduction. Prior to this study, little was known about the fine-scale habitat used during reproduction at the southernmost extent of the fisher’s range. Between 2007 and 2015, we attached radio-collars to 55 male and 72 female fishers in the southern Sierra Nevada and documented resting...