Treesearch

The Methods section is a key component of any ecology research publication containing detailed information on how the data were collected and analyzed. However, descriptions of which statistical methods were used and how they were applied can substantially vary and may not provide enough information for the analyses to be reproducible. Computational and statistical programming advances have allowed ecological researchers without a strong statistical or mathematical background to access and use increasingly complex statistical methods. Thus, statistical methods are written by and need to be...

Brown root rot disease (BRRD), caused by Phellinus noxius, is an important tree disease in tropical and subtropical areas. To improve chemical control of BRRD and deter emergence of fungicide resistance in P. noxius, this study investigated control efficacies and systemic activities of fungicides with different modes of action. Fourteen fungicides with 11 different modes of action were tested for inhibitory effects in vitro on 39 P. noxius isolates from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Australia, and Pacific Islands. Cyproconazole, epoxiconazole, and tebuconazole (Fungicide Resistance Action...

While many tree species occur across the Coastal Plain of the southeastern United States, longleaf pine (Pinus palustris C. Lawson) savannas and woodlands once dominated this region. To quantify longleaf pine’s past primacy and trends in the Coastal Plain, we combined seven studies consisting of 255,000 trees from land surveys, conducted between 1810 and 1860 with other descriptions of historical forests, including change to the present day. Our synthesis found support that Pinus palustris predominantly constituted 77% of historical Coastal Plain trees and upland oaks (Quercus) contributed...

Erosion is a concern due to environmental degradation, loss of valuable cropland, increased sediment loads in aquatic systems, and reduced reservoir capacity. To manage erosion, riparian forest buffers and bendway weirs were installed in the Little Blue River, Kansas, during years 2002-2010. To illustrate land cover changes associated with management for upland and streambank erosion, indicated through terrestrial land gains, particularly of permanent tree cover relative to short‐lived crop cover, we digitized 1m orthoimagery. For the pretreatment interval of 1991-2002, we digitized...

Background: Each spring and fall billions of songbirds depart on nocturnal migrations across the globe. Theory suggests that songbirds should depart on migration shortly after sunset to maximize their potential for nightly flight duration or to time departure with the emergence of celestial cues needed for orientation and navigation. Although captive studies have found that songbirds depart during a narrow window of time after sunset, observational studies have found that wild birds depart later and more asynchronously relative to sunset than predicted. Methods: We used coded radio tags...

Forests are widely recognized as critical to combating climate change due to their ability to sequester and store carbon in the form of biomass. In recent years, the combined use of data from ground-based forest inventories and remotely sensed data from light detection and ranging (lidar) has proven useful for large-scale assessment of forest biomass, but airborne lidar is expensive and data acquisition is infeasible for many countries. By contrast, the spaceborne Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) lidar instrument has collected freely available data for most of the world’s...

Balsam woolly adelgid (Hemiptera: Adelges picea Ratzeburg; BWA) is a nonnative, invasive insect that has infested fir trees in the US for over a century, yet robust methods for mapping BWA have remained elusive. We compare three approaches to mapping BWA in the subalpine fir forests of northern Utah, the forefront of BWA spread in the western US: (1) using moderate-resolution, multispectral satellite imagery; (2) using terrain and climate data; and (3) using a combination of imagery, terrain, and climate data. While the spectral data successfully detected forest degradation, they failed to...

We developed and applied a spatial optimization algorithm to prioritize forest and fuel management treatments within a proposed linear fuel break network on a 0.5 million ha Western US national forest. The large fuel break network, combined with the logistics of conducting forest and fuel management, requires that treatments be partitioned into a sequence of discrete projects, individually implemented over the next 10-20 years. The original plan for the network did not consider how linear segments would be packaged into projects and how projects would be prioritized for treatments over...

1. Recent hot droughts in California resulted in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) mortality attributed to drought and western pine beetle (WPB, Dendroctonus brevicomis). While drought alone can cause tree death, direct warming effects on WPB are a contributing factor. Research on WPB generation timing (voltinism), however, is lacking.2. We monitored WPB tree attacks and adult emergence timing at two California sites and developed a degree-day model from field-observed data. Historical, contemporary, and future temperatures for several California sites were used with the model to examine...

1. Fragmentation of habitat, for example by intensive agricultural practices, can be detrimental to local biodiversity. However, it often remains unclear whether such biodiversity declines are caused by loss of habitat area or increased fragmentation, and how habitat quality factors into it. In our study system, vegetated vineyards are typically small, and isolated from one another, potentially limiting the distribution and dispersal of organisms.2. In a full-factorial experiment of a priori selected vegetated vineyard patches of differing size and fragmentation, we aimed to disentangle...