Treesearch

Native plant seed can be used to restore healthy, resilient ecosystems in an era of global degradation and change. In the United States (U.S.), federal agencies bolster the availability of native seed by coordinating seed collection, agricultural production, and use in restoration and reclamation with a broad network of federal and non-federal partners. As a result, the native seed supply has greatly expanded, but challenges and knowledge gaps remain for effective native seed development and use. To address these issues, we synthesize lessons learned from 20+ years of experience across...

Forest roads directly influence storm runoff, soil erosion, and sediment transport, making soil and water conservation essential. This study estimated runoff and erosion using the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model for a typical unimproved forest road in the Chipola Experimental Forest, considering two alternative designs: a compacted “graded aggregate base” and a gravel surface. Both historical and future performance were evaluated using five widely used climate models in their Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) fifth phase (CMIP5) and sixth phase (CMIP6) versions...

Rainfall temporal resolution and climate input formats can influence runoff and soil erosion predictions on forest roads. This study evaluated their effects using the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) simulations for a forest road in Florida’s Chipola Experimental Forest. High-resolution NOAA-ASOS precipitation data (2000–2024) were used to generate breakpoint, fixed-interval (5–60 min), and time to peak/peak intensity (TPIP) climate inputs. WEPP predictions were generally stable across input types, with modest differences in average annual runoff and soil loss. Finer temporal...

The generality of the worldwide leaf economics spectrum (LES) has made it a pillar of trait-based ecological research. Yet, few studies have examined the processes shaping the evolution of the LES within species, in part, because most species occupy only a small portion of the LES. To address this gap, we took advantage of the distinct leaf economics strategies present in different ecotypes of the phenotypically diverse perennial grass Panicum virgatum (switchgrass) to generate a genetic mapping population, which we planted in common gardens at three sites spanning 12 degrees of latitude...

As extreme wildfire events become more frequent, understanding how forest treatments interact with wildfire is increasingly critical. However, assessing wildfire-treatment outcomes is challenging due to interactions among treatments, weather, topography, and fuels. We investigated wildfires from southern Wyoming to northern New Mexico to evaluate under what conditions treatments reduce the ecological impacts of fire, as measured by remotely sensed burn severity. We determined (1) factors influencing the relationship between treatments and burn severity, (2) how burn severity differed...

Coeur d'Alene salamanders ( Plethodon idahoensis ) are found in small, isolated populations in the mountains of Montana, Idaho, and British Columbia. Effective conservation of this species hinges upon understanding population distribution and connectivity; however, identifying occupied Coeur d'Alene salamander (CDL) sites is challenging. Surveys in Montana have been haphazard and have involved biologists searching potential sites during rainy nights in the early summer. To evaluate alternative survey methods, we sampled water at known‐occupied CDL sites across western Montana to evaluate...

The mountain pine beetle, Dendroctonus ponderosae, is a bark beetle that can cause extensive tree mortality of its hosts in western North America. Lodgepole pine, Pinus contorta, is one of its primary and most widely distributed hosts. The insect exhibits a one-year life cycle with a dispersal flight of emerging adults, referred to as brood adults, which attack new trees in the late spring–early summer. The larvae develop through the summer and overwinter. The following spring, development resumes, followed by pupation and emergence of a new generation of brood adults. Every year, a...

Generating satellite-based deforestation alerts with actionable latency requires frequent imaging, creating an imperative to use different sensors together. We introduce a simple and open-source framework called the Disturbance Index Alert System (DIAS), which is based upon transformation of imagery from different sources into an interoperable stream of Disturbance Index (DI) values. Whereas most alert systems target divergence of forested pixels from historical states, DIAS targets movement of a pixel’s Z-score position relative to the image-wide population of forest pixels along a...

The models that produce most existing forest height maps minimize mean individual prediction errors quantified by metrics such as Root Mean Square Error (RMSE). However, when predictor data do not explain all height variability in the training sample, this objective function leads to prediction toward the mean, distorting population-level prediction of height range and variability. Several existing forest height maps have used training data from NASA's Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar mission, and while the mission's retrievals are subject to measurement error, we used...

Maps of land cover class are more common, and generally more accurate, than maps of land use because “use” implies management intent that may not be directly sensible by earth-observing satellites. However, many monitoring frameworks related to sustainability require land use and land cover to be explicitly differentiated. This is particularly true for forests, where natural and human-caused dynamics in tree cover often occur independently of long-term land use changes that signal deforestation. We used an extensive multi-temporal, multi-variate sample of reference points across the United...