Treesearch

Populus species have a high productivity potential as short-rotation woody crops, provided that site-suitable varieties are planted. The Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, and the Blue Ridge Mountains make up a significant part of the eastern and southeastern USA, and an insight into poplar productivity and adaptability will be valuable for the successful implementation of large-scale poplar stands in these regions. The objectives of this study were to examine the green wood biomass (hereafter biomass), biomass allocation, and wood properties of poplars in relation to growing conditions,...

Bark and woodboring beetles include some of the most economically important forest pests. Understanding how these species are distributed in forests is critical for optimizing detection strategies. We placed traps at three heights above ground level at the edge and in the interior of two forests and focused on two groups: phloem/wood-feeding beetles (Coleoptera: Buprestidae, Cerambycidae, and some Curculionidae: Scolytinae) and ambrosia beetles (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae and Platypodinae). We recorded temperature, humidity, and canopy cover for each trap. Species richness...

With future global temperatures predicted to increase, the relationship between a host, pathogen, and environment, becomes less predictable and epidemics may pose a greater risk to forests worldwide. Resistance breeding is an important disease management tool, but because tree species require long breeding times, it is necessary to develop techniques for testing current pathogen isolates against their hosts. Pitch canker disease of pines, caused by the pathogen Fusarium circinatum, is no exception and represents a threat to pine forests and commercial plantations worldwide, as it thrives...

Scientific knowledge and tools have central roles in contemporary federal forest programs that promote restoration in large landscapes and across ownerships. Although we know much about the role of science in decisionmaking and ways that science can be better linked to practice, we know less about manager perspectives about science and science tools, and the perceived role of both in planning. We surveyed Forest Service resource managers in the western United States to address this knowledge gap. Respondents engaged most frequently with science via reading research publications; direct...

Root disease caused by Armillaria mexicana and/or A. mellea is associated with tree mortality in peach (Prunus persica) orchards within their primary production zone of the Mexican sub-tropics. To improve management options for this disease, the resistance/susceptibility reactions of three Prunus rootstocks to infection by A. mexicana (isolate MEX85) and A. mellea (isolate MEX100) were evaluated under greenhouse and field conditions. Greenhouse phase: A. mexicana and A. mellea were independently inoculated on 14 trees (10-month old) of each rootstock in polycarbonate containers: P....

Wildland firefighters are exposed to wood smoke, which contains hazardous air pollutants, by suppressing thousands of wildfires across the U. S. each year. We estimated the relative risk of lung cancer and cardiovascular disease mortality from existing PM2.5 exposure-response relationships using measured PM4 concentrations from smoke and breathing rates from wildland firefighter field studies across different exposure scenarios. To estimate the relative risk of lung cancer (LC) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality from exposure to PM2.5 from smoke, we used an existing exposure-respons...

Background: Fire is an important disturbance that influences species composition, community structure, and ecosystem function in forests. Disturbances such as hurricanes and landslides are critical determinants of community structure to Caribbean forests, but few studies have addressed the effect of paleofire disturbance on forests in Puerto Rico, USA. Soil charcoal is widely used to reconstruct fire history. However, the occurrence and frequency of paleofire can be underestimated due to charcoal decay. Results: We reconstructed the fire history of subtropical dry forests of Puerto Rico...

The species abundance distribution (SAD) is a fundamental pattern in macroecology. Understanding how SADs vary spatially, and identifying the variables that drive any change, is important from a theoretical perspective because it enables greater understanding of the factors that underpin the relative abundance of species. However, precise knowledge on how the form of SADs varies across large (continental) scales is limited. Here, we use the shape parameter of the gambin distribution to assess how meta‐community‐scale SAD shape varies spatially as a function of various climatic variables...

The Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is one of the most commonly used vegetation indices for monitoring ecosystem dynamics and modeling biosphere processes. However, global NDVI products are usually provided with relatively coarse spatial resolutions that lack important spatial details. Producing NDVI timeseries data with high spatiotemporal resolution is indispensable for monitoring land surfaces and ecosystem changes, especially in spatiotemporally heterogeneous areas. The Improved Flexible Spatiotemporal DAta Fusion (IFSDAF) method was developed in this study to fill this...

Meta-analyses are powerful tools for synthesizing wildlife-habitat relationships, but small sample sizes and complex species-habitat relationships often preclude correlative metaanalyses on endangered species. In this study, we demonstrate qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) as a tool that can reliably synthesize habitat-fitness relationships from small sample sizes for species with narrow habitat requirements.We apply QCA to results from a habitat threshold regression tree model and identify habitat thresholds with consistent positive effects on fitness of the federally endangered...