Treesearch

Aquatic ecosystems worldwide face increasing human–wildlife conflicts as fishing activities overlap with critical habitats for vulnerable species. Human–wildlife interactions in artisanal fisheries exemplify socio-ecological systems that necessitate adaptive management approaches, integrating ecological and social dimensions. This study integrates socio-ecological systems theory and quantitative modelling to identify gear-based and attitudinal pathways for coexistence between fishermen and the African manatee (Trichechus senegalensis) in Lake Ossa Wildlife Reserve, Cameroon. We conducted...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides this resource update yearly as an overview of forest resources in Arkansas. These estimates are derived from field data collected across a systematic network of fixed-radius forest monitoring plots located on both public and private land. New updates are provided annually as a subset of plots within the State are remeasured. Each year, field crews visit and measure a subset of all FIA plots across the entire State (the size of the subset varies by State and year). Combining all...

Fire is an ecological disturbance that can accelerate nutrient cycling and alter herbivore distribution in grasslands and shrublands. Historically and today, humans have used prescribed fire to enhance forage quality for wild and domestic herbivores, and to achieve other management objectives. Contextual factors such as ecosystem type, seasonality, and fuel characteristics can determine how prescribed fire affects forage quality. For example, forage quality enhancements are relatively short lived in shortgrass steppe and subhumid grasslands but may persist for multiple years in northern...

Plants are an integral part of the Earth’s Critical Zone, linking the atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere (Field et al. 2015). To improve our insights into ecological theory and ecosystem processes, we need a more holistic view of plants that incorporates the “unseen elephant” of belowground plant organs and their traits (Fig. 1). Roots and belowground stems (e.g., rhizomes and tubers) acquire and store nutrients and support belowground buds that enable plants to regenerate following dormant seasons or disturbance (Klimešová and Klimeš 2007). Although belowground plant...

Competitive effects on biomass and vegetative reproduction can be especially strong when plants are young and establishing their clonal network of ramets. Invasive clonal plants may mitigate the effects of competition better than native clonal plants. We evaluated the competitive effects on the propagule supply and the number and biomass of tillers and rhizomes of invasive (Bromus inermis) and native (Pascopyrum smithii) perennial grass seedlings. Competition reduced aboveground biomass and the number of tillers for both species in most competitive scenarios, except for B. inermis under...

United States (U.S.), raising concerns about the persistence of widespread, ecologically important species like lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. var. latifolia Engelm.). We sampled a long-term provenance trial in northcentral Colorado, U.S. to examine intraspecific differences in tree size, survival, growth-climate response, and drought tolerance. Using thirty years of tree-ring data and climate data relativized as the climatic distance between provenances and planting site, we evaluated the influence of provenance climate on growth-climate relationships and resistance, recovery, and...

Management of western United States dry-conifer forests has experienced a design shift from spacing-based treatments to maximize forest growth and minimize fire hazard towards balancing fuels reduction while restoring historical forest spatial patterns. However, successfully implementing spatially heterogeneous silvicultural treatments capable of mimicking a landscape’s historical range of variability (HRV) has proven challenging. Early individual tree marking (ITM) strategies aiming to create heterogeneous forest structure often had unclear or confusing instructions. This study evaluates...

Foliar moisture content (FMC) plays a crucial role in arid, frequent-fire forests by influencing fire behavior, tree survival, and serving as a proxy for tree health. Management actions such as mechanical thinning, flammable fuels reduction, and prescribed fires can act to mitigate wildfire risk and improve forest health by reducing fuel connectivity, diversifying forest structure, and creating canopy gaps. These management actions could be improved by the targeted removal of moisture stressed and potentially more flammable trees during treatments. However, maps of FMC are not widely...

The extension of NASA’s Ice, Cloud, and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) mission beyond the cryosphere to include the study of vegetation and the land surface has significantly advanced global Earth observation. This review synthesizes findings from 293 peer-reviewed articles and provides a comprehensive assessment of the mission’s contributions to terrestrial ecosystem science. We begin by outlining the mission’s objectives, instrumentation, and core data products—particularly ATL03 (geolocated photons) and ATL08 (terrain and canopy heights)—which have supported a wide array of...

Background. Mapping surface and ground fuels is key to predicting fire behavior and effects. Remote sensing effectively describes tree canopy attributes, but it is less effective for surface and ground fuels because they are partially obscured by vegetation. Aims. We mapped duff loads by leveraging the coupled relationship between canopy, surface and ground fuels: canopy fuels provide the source material for surface fuels, which serve as the material for duff formation. Methods. We mapped annual surface fuel production from tree components that contribute to duff formation using airborne...