Treesearch

Laurel wilt is a disease of woody plants in the laurel family (Lauraceae). Hundreds of millions of redbay (Persea borbonia) trees have been killed by laurel wilt in the southeastern Atlantic Coastal Plain region of the United States (US). The disease has also killed large numbers of sassafras (Sassafras albidum) trees in forests and landscapes, and avocado (Persea americana) trees in commercial production. As of October 2019, laurel wilt was known to occur from Texas to North Carolina, south through Florida and north to Kentucky. Laurel wilt is expected to continue spreading through...

A primary prediction of climate change ecology is that species will track their climate niche poleward and upslope. However, studies have shown species responding in surprising ways. In this study, we aim to understand the impact of global change on species ranges by considering both climate and habitat changes. Using occupancy analysis of acoustic survey data in the mountains of the northeastern United States, we tested specific predictions of range responses to warming (shifting upslope), precipitation change (shifting downslope), and forest composition change (shifting downslope). We...

An analysis of the urban forest in the city and extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) of San Antonio, TX revealed that this area had an estimated 137.8 million live trees across all ownerships. The most common tree species were Ashe juniper (Juniperus ashei), Texas persimmon (Diospyros texana), mescal bean (Sophora secundiflora), sugarberry (Celtis laevigata), and honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa). Trees in San Antonio were estimated to store about 3.5 million tons of carbon (12.8 million tons of carbon dioxide [CO2]), valued at $594.4 million. In addition, these trees were estimated to...

Downed timber is valuable for manufacturing biochar in environmental remediation applications due to the low cost of raw materials and low-temperature manufacturing process. Loblolly pine (Pinus taeda L.) trees at different maturities (15-, 30-, and 39-year-old) with 0, 6, and 12 months of local environmental exposure in the southeastern region of the US were collected for biochar manufacturing. The biochar samples were characterized for their physicochemical properties, including morphologies, elemental compositions, surface functional groups, carbon structure, pH, electrical conductivity,...

Land-use and land-cover (LULC) change is a primary driver of terrestrial carbon release, often through the conversion of forest into agriculture or expansion of urban areas. Classification schemes are a key component of landscape analyses. This study creates a novel LULC classification scheme by incorporating ecological data to redefine classes of an existing LULC classification based on variation in above-ground tree carbon. A tree inventory was conducted for 531 plots within a subbasin of the Tampa Bay Watershed, Florida, USA. Above-ground tree carbon was estimated using the i-Tree...

This resource update contains the findings of a canvass of all primary wood-using plants. It complements the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) annual inventory of volume and removals. The canvass was conducted to determine the amount and source of wood receipts and annual timber product imports/exports. Only primary wood-using mills were canvassed. Primary mills are those that process roundwood in log or bolt form or as chipped roundwood. Examples of industrial roundwood products are saw logs, pulpwood, veneer logs, poles, and logs used for composite board products. Mills producing...

Flood peak magnitudes and frequency estimates are key components of any effective nationwide flood risk management and flood damage abatement program. In this study, we evaluated normalized peak design discharges (Qp) for 1,387 hydrologic unit code 16 to 20 (HUC16-20) watersheds in the White Mountain National Forest (WMNF), New Hampshire and in five Experimental Forest (EF) regions across the United States managed by USDA Forest Service (USDA-FS). Nonstationary regional frequency analysis (RFA) and single site frequency analysis (FA) with long-term high-resolution observed streamflow data...

The Boggy Slough Conservation Area (BSCA), located west of Lufkin, TX, is a 19,055-acre property in Houston and Trinity Counties. The property has a mix of upland and bottomland forested ecosystems and a long history of management for conservation values. Since the early 20th century the property has been under private ownership, with the Temple family and their forest products corporation as owners for most of this time. The T.L.L. Temple Foundation purchased the property in 2013 to honor the Temple family, the corporate history, and their combined legacy in east Texas, and to demonstrate...

Aim: Efforts to understand how pollinating insect diversity is distributed across large geographic areas are rare despite the importance of such work for conserving regional diversity. We sought to relate the diversity of bees (Hymenoptera: Apoidea), hover flies (Diptera: Syrphidae), and butterflies (Lepidoptera) to ecoregion, landscape context, canopy openness, and forest composition across southeastern U.S. forests. Location: Nineteen experimental forests across nine states in the southeastern U.S. Methods: We established 5–7 plots on each experimental forest. In each, we sampled...

In 2009, we determined the effects of the enantiomeric composition of the kairomone, α-pinene, on trap catches of arboreal beetles (Coleoptera) in stands of eastern pine trees with resin dominated by (+)-α-pinene. We hypothesized that the responses of beetles would correlate with the predominant enantiomer of α-pinene found in host pines. Lures of (+)-, racemic (±), and (−)-α-pinene were added separately to ethanol-baited multiple-funnel traps. Species such as Monarthrum mali (Fitch), Dendroctonus terebrans (Olivier), Ips grandicollis (Eichhoff), and Pachylobius picivorus (Germar) (Coleopte...