Treesearch

A summer storm passes, flashing lightning but little rain and a fire starts to grow. Flames lick the bases of trees, charring stems and strong winds fan the fire at times, causing the flames to scorch foliage, as it burns through a forest. The fate of these burned trees after the flames are doused is one of intense interest. Will the forest become a carbon source? Will there be suitable wildlife habitat? Will enough trees survive to perpetuate and regenerate the forest? Are the trees now more vulnerable to bark beetle attacks or drought? To answer these questions, ecologists are reliant on...

A scientific consensus is building that the drawdown of very large amounts (at least 1,000 Gt [1.1 x 1012 tn]) of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere will be needed to stabilize the earth’s climate system at a safe temperature (Hansen et al. 2008; Cao and Caldeira 2010; IPCC 2018, 2019). The minimum estimated cost of this drawdown is tens of trillions of dollars over the course of a century and ultimately will depend on the total amount of fossil carbon (C) emitted by humankind (emissions must be reduced as quickly as possible to make any drawdown effective). The cost of drawdown,...

Aim: Non-native invasive plants impact ecosystems globally, and the distributions of many species are expanding. The current and potential distributions of many invaders have not been characterized at the broad scales needed for effective management. We modelled the distributions of 15 non-native invasive grass and forb species of concern in western North America to define their environmental niches and predict potential invasion risk. Location: Arid and semi-arid western United States. Methods: We modelled species distribution using presence/absence data from > 148,000 vegetation survey...

Tree species resistant to drought stress are likely to be more successful under the moisture-limited conditions predicted with climate change, and variation in drought-resistant traits can influence a species’ sensitivity to change. Trait variation is often tied to the timing, amount, and type of precipitation a given forest stand is exposed to, and local topographic heterogeneity may exacerbate or mitigate soil moisture stress. Although drought resistance is well-studied in widespread tree species, knowledge is limited on trait variation in droughtresistant conifers with more narrow...

The intent of this article is to raise awareness about an underutilized funding mechanism that possesses the capacity to help tribal and federal land management agencies meet their goal of restoring fire-adapted ecosystems to historic conditions in the American Southwest. We attempt to achieve this through an exploration of the Reserved Treaty Rights Lands (RTRL) program and how it has been used to implement collaborative fuel management projects on National Forest lands. RTRL is a funding program administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) that is designed to protect natural and...

The Pinyon Jay is a highly social, year-round inhabitant of pinyon-juniper and other coniferous woodlands in the western United States. Range-wide, Pinyon Jays have declined ~ 3-4% per year for at least the last half-century. Occurrence patterns and habitat use of Pinyon Jays have not been well characterized across much of the species’ range, and obtaining this information is necessary for better understanding the causes of ongoing declines and determining useful conservation strategies. Additionally, it is important to better understand if and how targeted removal of pinyon-juniper...

This publication describes a large collection of gravel bedload transport measurements taken in numerous small Rocky Mountain streams (the database is available at https://www.fs.fed.us/biology/nsaec/projects-bedloadtraps.html). The database was developed for gravel bedload data collected between 1998 and 2015 during 14 campaigns at 12 field sites in 9 Rocky Mountain streams in Colorado and Wyoming and 1 stream in the Cascade Mountains in eastern Oregon. The data were collected with bedload traps - large, unflared samplers that had been specially developed to obtain representative samples...

Forest residues and logging slash from pre-commercial forest thinning and regeneration harvests are a potential feedstock for bioenergy production but there has been a concern about the impact of residue removal on forest soil C and N. This study aimed to address such by conducting two meta-analyses using the data available from published literature and an independent dataset compiled from the North American Long-Term Soil Productivity (LTSP) study. For the meta-analysis using literature, we categorized forest harvesting and biomass removal into i) no harvest control, ii) bole-only (BO,...

Facing rapid loss of biodiversity as a consequence of climate change, Chile has formally pledged to restore 600,000 ha of native forest by 2035. This effort, however, has not considered the amount and quality of native plants required to meet this pledge. Thus, we examined data collected during the annual, government-conducted census of small- and medium-sized nurseries from central Chile, which account for 78% of the nation’s total plant production, to assess if current production is sufficient to meet Chile´s restoration needs. We coupled this with data collected during our series of...

Jaguars (Panthera onca), like other apex predators, are highly susceptible to habitat loss and fragmentation given their low demographic potential and large habitat area requirements. Across their range, the Pantanal is considered critical for the jaguar’s long-term conservation. Here we provide the first multi-scale path selection function model for jaguars, and the first empirically-based movement model covering the entire Pantanal ecosystem. Out of eight investigated variables, six were related to jaguar habitat use in the Pantanal: terrain roughness, human population density, grassland,...