Treesearch

The type species of the genus, Epiceraticelus fluvialis Crosby & Bishop, 1931, is herein redescribed since the types are presumed lost. In addition, a new species, Epiceraticelus mandyae n. sp., from the Southeastern United States is described.

Oobius primorskyensis Yao and Duan (Hymenoptera: Encyrtidae) is a recently described egg parasitoid of the emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, from the Russian Far East. To support the potential introduction of this new parasitoid for biocontrol of EAB in North America, we surveyed EAB eggs on infested green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica Marsh) trees in the Russian Far East and documented the rate of EAB egg parasitism by O. primorskyensis. After establishing quarantine colonies of O. primorskyensis in the United States, we tested the parasitoid against eggs of 30 taxa of...

*Key message Agrilus macer is attacking sugarberry trees in the southeastern USA, a region from which few specimens have been previously collected. Despite attacking at high densities, this species appears to be a secondary pest, and there is no evidence it carries harmful fungal pathogens. * Context Because the genus Agrilus Curtis includes significant forest pests, the association of a poorly known species, Agrilus macer LeConte, with unexplained sugarberry (Celtis laevigata Willd.) mortality in the southeastern USA is a cause for alarm. * Aims This study sought to investigate the...

Tree survival is a performance metric for urban forestry initiatives, and an understanding of the factors that influence mortality can help managers target resources and enhance survival. Furthermore, urban tree planting investments depend on tree survival to maximize ecosystem services. In this literature review, we categorized factors commonly associated with urban tree mortality and summarized mortality rates published in 56 studies, focusing on studies of trees along streets, in yards, and in landscaped parks. Study designs included quantitative field monitoring of uneven-aged tree...

Controlling competing vegetation is vital for early plantation establishment and growth. Aboveground biomass (AGB) response to manual grubbing release from shrub competition was compared with no release control in a twelve-year-old ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Lawson & C. Lawson) plantation established after a wildfire in northeastern California. In addition, response to chemical release followed by precommercial thinning in an adjacent plantation was also examined as a growth potential from a more intensively managed regime, where shrub competition was virtually eliminated. We measured...

Although droughts affect most U.S. forests, there is considerable variation between regions in terms of drought frequency and intensity (Hanson and Weltzin 2000). These differences characterize the regions’ prevailing drought regimes. Most forests in the Western United States are subject to annual seasonal droughts. In contrast, forests in the Eastern United States usually experience one of two general drought patterns: random (i.e., occurring at any time of year) occasional droughts, as observed in the Appalachian Mountains and the Northeast, or frequent late-summer droughts, as usually...

Among other responsibilities, the Forest Health Assessment and Applied Sciences Team (FHAAST) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service Forest Health Protection (FHP) program has spent the past several years developing the Digital Mobile Sketch Mapper (DMSM) for its aerial survey program. This is intended to replace the Digital Aerial Sketch Mapper (DASM) as the primary way that aerial survey data are collected, stored, accessed, and processed. The Insect and Disease Survey (IDS) program is currently transitioning from DASM to DMSM. The IDS database (DB) contains mostly DASM...

Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) is a planned process that aims to regain socio-cultural and ecological integrity to enhance human well-being and ecological processes in deforested or degraded landscapes. FLR demonstrates the value of an integrated and interdisciplinary approach to assist the recovery of landscapes and inclusive of socio-ecological systems. The consideration of diverse knowledge systems in FLR embraces many aspects of knowing the landscape, including Traditional or Indigenous Knowledge and Western or International Knowledge systems. Knowledge systems represent much more...

As a pervasive disturbance agent operating at many spatial and temporal scales, wildland fre is a key abiotic factor affecting forest health both positively and negatively. In some ecosystems, for example, wildland fres have been essential for regulating processes that maintain forest health (Lundquist and others 2011). Wildland fre is an important ecological mechanism that shapes the distributions of species, maintains the structure and function of fre-prone communities, and acts as a signifcant evolutionary force (Bond and Keeley 2005). At the same time, wildland fres have created forest...

The ability to accurately estimate abundance is crucial to ecologists, conservationists, and managers to provide insight on species status, population trends, and viability. Acoustic detection and occupancy modeling can provide an understanding of resource use for bats, but these methods do not estimate how many bats are in an area, or how these numbers change over time. In North America, there is a heightened need to estimate bat abundance and trends in response to white-nose syndrome (WNS) and other threats to bat populations. We assessed the performance of the N-mixture model for...