Treesearch

Drought is a natural part of the Southeastern United States climate and a threat to agricultural productivity and profitability. Whether slow developing or rapid onset, droughts can have negative effects on agricultural crops and livestock, depending on timing, severity, and length. Droughts are expected to become increasingly common in the Southeast due to increasing temperatures, longer dry periods between rain events, and growing water demand across the region. To help producers remain resilient and productive in the face of this threat, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)...

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly promoted in agricultural and forestry policy, yet their effectiveness depends on technical assistance providers (TAPs) who translate policy guidelines into land management decisions. Drawing on Diffusion of Innovations and Value–Belief–Norm frameworks, this study examines how TAPs’ professional backgrounds, organizational affiliations, regional contexts, and management experiences shape their knowledge, perceived importance, and promotion of NBS. A web-based survey of 101 TAPs in North Carolina was analyzed using Spearman correlations and...

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 Georgia. 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...

Pollution and deposition of sediments in rivers and streams are critical environmental, ecological, navigational, and recreational concerns. While several well‐known watershed models such as SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) and HSPF (Hydrological Simulation Program‐FORTRAN) are applied to predict sediment concentrations and loads in rivers and streams, their application requires the acquisition of a large amount of climatic, GIS, land use, and watershed input data, which is very time‐consuming and cost‐prohibitive. This study developed a copula‐based regression method to predict...

Hurricanes routinely damage forests across the North Atlantic Basin, yet efforts to characterize their impacts have had mixed subregional success. To elucidate these challenges, this study analyzed pre- and post-hurricane land surface phenology (LSP) for 44 moderate and strong hurricanes over 22 years using the Enhanced Vegetation Index (EVI). We statistically grouped storms based on their long-term climate attributes, then compared subregional impacts with wind speed and land cover. After accounting for wind speed, responses differed among the six subregions. The Southeast U.S. showed...

In 2020, 18.9 million acres (55 percent) of Arkansas’s total forest land was classified as forested by the Forest Inventory and Analysis program, of which 18.4 million acres were timberland and 494,400 acres were reserved forest land. More than 80 percent of Arkansas’s forests are privately owned, 13 percent were in National Forests, and 3 percent in other public lands. The 2020 estimates revealed increases in both hardwood and softwood tree volume, with total volume up over 10 percent since 2015. Softwood volume was reported at 15.2 billion cubic feet, while hardwood volume was 20.8...

The southern pine beetle (SPB) is a serious pest of pine forests from Central America to the eastern United States, with a recent range expansion into the northeastern United States. Efforts to detect and monitor SPB activity began in 1960 as part of an overall integrated pest management system to limit its impact to southern pine forests. The ubiquity of SPB’s pine hosts in the southern United States, in the form of plantations and natural mixed stands, along with the regular occurrence of SPB outbreaks over a vast region, makes SPB a leading driver of overall forest health across this...

Biomass burning (BB) is a major source of atmospheric particles and trace gases, influencing climate change, air quality, and human health. During the Georgia Wildland-Fire Simulation Experiment, we measured the hygroscopicity (κ) and size resolved cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) activity of BB particles from controlled burns of fuel beds representative of three ecoregions in Georgia, United States. Primary BB particles were predominantly organic, and photooxidation in an oxidation flow reactor produced secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in a new nucleation mode while transforming primary...

Corbicula fluminea is a widespread aquatic invasive species that has major ecological effects. Corbicula is a proposed factor in global freshwater mussel declines, but its effects on mussels are poorly understood. We conducted five laboratory experiments to assess effects of Corbicula on juvenile mussel survival and growth and the modulating effects of food abundance, temperature, and the type of co-occurring bivalve. Corbicula had no effect on 60-day-old mussel survival. In two experiments, growth was higher in the presence of Corbicula; higher growth occurred only at low food in one...

Surface fire is the primary ecological filter maintaining eastern North American woodlands. However, fire is not the only filteraffecting species demographics, and in the absence of fire, the influence of secondary filters, such as seed predators, increases.To explore how different seed predator guilds affect individual species, we established seed offerings examining the effects ofpredator type (invertebrates only and invertebrates + small mammals), forest type (upland and floodplain), season (fall andsummer), and offering location (beneath conspecific and heterospecific focal trees) on...