Treesearch

Advances in remote sensing coupled with numerical modelling allow us to build a “virtual ecohydraulics watershed” at the micro-habitat scale. This approach is an integrated modelling framework with a cascade of models including physical (hydrologic, hydraulic, and stream water temperature) and biological (fish habitat) modelling at a resolution and extent important for aquatic and terrestrial organisms. We applied this approach to quantify the impacts of discharges and water temperature on habitat quality and spatial/temporal habitat use patterns of bull trout, a federally listed species...

Hydrological processes in mountainous settings depend on snow distribution, whose prediction accuracy is a function of model spatial scale. Although model accuracy is expected to improve with finer spatial resolution, an increase in resolution comes with modelling costs related to increased computational time and greater input data and parameter information. This computational and data collection expense is still a limiting factor for many large watersheds. Thus, this work's main objective is to question which physical processes lead to loss in model accuracy with regard to input spatial...

A century of fire suppression has left fire-dependent forests of the western United States increasingly vulnerable to wildfire, drought, and insects. Forest managers are trying to improve resilience using treatments such as mechanical thinning and prescribed fire; however, operational and resource constraints limit treatments to a fraction of the needed area each year. An alternative is to let wildfires burn under less-than-extreme fire weather where human lives and infrastructure are not at risk. We examined post-fire forest structure using airborne lidar data to determine whether a...

Self-medication behaviour is the use of natural materials or chemical substances to manipulate behaviour or alter the body’s response to parasites or pathogens. Self-medication can be preventive, performed before an individual becomes infected or diseased, and/or therapeutic, performed after an individual becomes infected or diseased. We summarized all available reports of self-medication in mammals and reconstructed its evolution. We found that reports of self-medication were restricted to eutherian mammals and evolved at least four times independently. Self-medication was most commonly...

In this study, we automate tree species classification and mapping using field-based training data, high spatial resolution airborne hyperspectral imagery, and a convolutional neural network classifier (CNN). We tested our methods by identifying seven dominant trees species as well as dead standing trees in a mixed-conifer forest in the Southern Sierra Nevada Mountains, CA (USA) using training, validation, and testing datasets composed of spatially-explicit transects and plots sampled across a single strip of imaging spectroscopy. We also used a three-band ‘Red-Green-Blue’ pseudo true-color...

With the proportion of the global population living in urban areas expected to reach 67% by 2040, soils located in these areas, or urban soils, will become increasingly important, particularly with regards to how these soils respond to climate change and their ability to provide ecosystem services. Moreover, urban areas to a large degree have already experienced elevated air temperatures, carbon dioxide concentrations, and increased variability in precipitation, and thus can serve as analogs for how forest soils will respond to climate change. This chapter reviews the wide range of soil...

Deforestation, rising temperatures, drought, fire and other ecological disturbances are reducing forest cover on much of the earth, and compromising the ability of forests to supply important ecosystem services. Ecosystem management and ecological restoration are focused on preventing and repairing ecosystem degradation, but the rapidity and pervasiveness of these global transformations threaten to exceed our capacity to plan for or respond to them at sufficient spatiotemporal scales. In this chapter we focus on forests in two contrasting biomes e boreal and Mediterranean e that are...

Wetlands are characterized by water at or near the soil surface for all or significant part of the year, are a source for food, fiber and water to society, and because of their position in landscapes and ecological structure help to moderate floods. They are also unique ecosystems with long-persistent flora and fauna. Because water is a driving factor for existence as a wetland, these systems are particularly vulnerable to climate change, especially as warming is accompanied by changes the quality and quantity of water moving through these systems. Because they are such diverse ecosystems,...

Temperate forests are extensive in the mid-latitudes of Earth and include a broad range of forest types and climates. Temperate forest soils reflect the seasonal variability in temperature and precipitation that make them productive and highly variable. Temperate forest soils also reflect the forest vegetation under which they develop. The extent, distribution and characteristics of temperate forests and forest soils are described in this Chapter, as well as their sensitivity to climate change. Because temperate forests are often located near large human populations, they are also affected...

Soil maps provide essential information for forest management, and a recent transformation of the map making process through digital soil mapping (DSM) is providing much improved soil information compared to what was available through traditional mapping methods. The improvements include higher resolution soil data for greater mapping extents, and incorporating a wide range of environmental factors to predict soil classes and attributes, along with a better understanding of mapping uncertainties. In this chapter, we provide a brief introduction to the concepts and methods underlying the...