Treesearch

Flow pathways on unpaved forest roads are critical determinants of surface runoff and sediment transport. These flow pathways can be largely altered through road deformation caused by heavy traffic, with one of the most common types of deformation being ruts. Historically, rut development has been studied using cross-sectional analyses. More recently, remote sensing techniques, such as structure-from- motion (SfM) or terrestrial LiDAR scanning (TLS), have demonstrated their utility in mapping ruts on forest roads. However, applications of these data are limited, especially with respect to...

As wildfires intensify across the western United States, understanding long-term ecosystem recovery is increasingly critical. Post-fire soil amendments, such as woody mulch or biochar, are commonly used to stabilize soils and promote vegetation recovery, yet their effects on plant functional strategies and plant–microbe interactions remain poorly understood. Thirteen years after a high-severity wildfire in Colorado, we evaluated the impacts of these treatments on soil properties, microbial communities, and plant functional traits, including plant height, specific leaf area (SLA), and leaf...

Anthropogenic pressures have altered fire regimes across the western United States. These altered fire regimes, and the megafires they often produce, threaten ecologically and economically critical ecosystems and biodiversity across this region. Oak woodland savannas may be particularly sensitive to altered fire regimes, but there remains a significant gap in our understanding of how different characteristics of wildfire impact these ecosystems and the wildlife species that reside within them. In this study, we used an occupancy modeling framework to investigate how fire severity and...

Diapause regulates seasonal insect life cycles and may be highly variable within and among populations due to genetic and environmental variability. Both types of variation may influence how populations respond plastically or evolutionarily to changing climates. We assessed diapause variability in spruce beetle Dendroctonus rufipennis Kirby (Coleoptera: Curculionidae, Scolytinae), a major forest pest whose life cycle timing is regulated by both prepupal and adult diapauses. Using mating studies and ovary dissections, we tested for variability in adult diapause within and between collection...

Headwater streams are abundant in mountain landscapes and where municipal watersheds occur on public lands; they co-occur with road networks open to off-highway vehicle (OHV) use. Despite well-known, deleterious interactions of roads and streams, few studies have empirically examined the biophysical impacts of OHV use where backcountry roads enter streams at open-water crossings. We present a case study using a controlled design where we quantified OHV road impacts in a Rocky Mountain stream and evaluated the restoration efficacy by examining aquatic biota and habitat before and after...

Habitat selection and movement are key mechanisms by which animals can respond to and potentially cope with highly variable environmental conditions. Optimal responses likely vary, however, depending on the severity and scope of conditions. We tested this hypothesis using a facultative migrant species, the Great Gray Owl (Strix nebulosa), which exhibits high inter-and intra-individual variation in the timing, direction, and distance of winter movements. Specifically, we evaluated whether episodic, spatiotemporally variable “locked-pasture” snow conditions, which restrict access to subnivean...

Pinyon ips (Ips confusus LeConte) is a native bark beetle that can cause extensive mortality of pinyon pines (Pinus spp.) in the western United States, particularly during hot droughts that stress trees. Although pinyon ips is assumed to be multivoltine, with multiple generations per year, research is lacking regarding temperature-dependent phenology and field-based evidence of annual generations. At sites in Arizona and New Mexico, across two years, we monitored pinyon ips lifecycle timing using emergence cages on trees and passive traps. These data and associated field-based temperatures...

As changes in climate accelerate, mature forests experience different local conditions than those that they were established under and are likely adapted to. Tree regeneration is highly constrained by climatic conditions and as these conditions continue to change, it is important to understand how reforestation choices will affect future forests. Provenance studies have been used for more than a century to understand the influence of genetics and the environment on traits, and can now additionally provide information on provenance performance under the rapidly changing climate. Here we...

habitat loss and encroachment by generalist competitors. Ecological theory predicts that niche differentiation through dietary specialisation can facilitate coexistence with generalist competitors. We quantified dietary overlap between a high-elevation specialist, the Sierra Nevada red fox (SNRF; Vulpes vulpes necator) and a widespread generalist, the coyote (Canis latrans), as well as other sympatric carnivores. We were especially interested in dietary items that were themselves specialised to alpine habitats, as we expected them to be most critical to SNRF. To characterise diet, we used...

The ability to collect precise three-dimensional (3D) forest structural information at a fraction of the cost of airborne light detection and ranging (lidar) makes uncrewed aerial systems-lidar (UAS-lidar) a remote sensing tool with high potential for estimating forest structural attributes for enhanced forest management. The estimation of forest structural data in area-based forest inventories relies on the relationship between field-based estimates of forest structural attributes (FSA) and lidar-derived metrics at plot level, which can be modeled using either parametric or non-parametric...