Treesearch

Mature and old-growth forests (MOG) provide essential ecosystem services, yet they face increasing threats. Currently, high-intensity, high-severity wildfires are the main driver for loss of MOG on federally managed forests across the United States. Quantifying MOG forests with greatest exposure to stand-replacing wildfires provides essential information for land managers. We integrated geospatial data from fire behavior simulations (fire intensity), fire refugia prediction (fire severity), forest type mapping, and carbon estimates to assess exposure of MOG forests to stand-replacing...

Drought is expected to increase in frequency and severity due to climate change, highlighting the urgency of understanding drought impacts on wildlife across geographies and taxonomic groups. We conducted a review of peer‐reviewed articles from 1982 to 2024, focusing on the impacts of anomalous drought on terrestrial vertebrates. We recorded 3324 total wildlife responses, 188 from single‐species studies and 3136 from multi‐species studies. Within single‐species studies, 66% of responses were negative, 32% were unclear, and 2% were positive, illustrating the widespread threat of increasing...

Biochar, a carbon-rich material that can be produced from forest byproducts and waste, is emerging as a valuable material for removing heavy metal ions from aqueous solutions. Biochar can be produced by many processes and equipment. Among these, mobile air curtain burners, developed to achieve lower levels of particulate matter and smoke than open pile burning, can be deployed in the field where biomass feedstocks are located. To elucidate lead metal ion (Pb2+) removal mechanisms, this study characterized seven biochars generated by a novel mobile curtain burner, representing the first...

The breadth of management goals in large and complex landscapes encompasses biotic communities with diverse life histories. However, managing multiple communities may be challenging when resource requirements overlap, like forage for ungulates and floral resources for bees. For three years in a riparian forest in northeastern Oregon, USA, we manipulated the presence of wild deer and elk, domestic cattle, and the combination of wild and domestic ungulates, to understand the separate and cumulative influence of grazing by different functional feeding guilds on bloom and bee communities....

The effects of salvage logging on runoff and sediment delivery processes are not well understood. We used rill erosion simulation experiments for 3 years after the 2013 Rim Fire to understand how post‐fire salvage logging and mitigation practises affect runoff and sediment delivery rates. We assessed soil conditions, surface cover, runoff rates and sediment delivery rates on hillslope plots that were either burned at high severity (controls) or burned at high severity with additional logging treatments including no logging traffic, few pass or many pass skid trails, and skid trails that...

White-nose syndrome (WNS), caused by the fungal pathogen Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd), has led to widespread declines in tricolored bat (Perimyotis subflavus) populations across the eastern United States. Management actions have largely focused on increasing overwinter survival rates of Pd-infected bats through directly manipulating hibernacula. Maintenance of high-quality active-season habitat is also an important component of bat population recovery because it can result in higher body fat composition during the overwintering period and therefore increase survival rates of individual...

Prescribed burning is a common management tool for both shortleaf pine and associated oak species, as they can resprout following top-kill and are adapted to frequent surface fire regimes. In Missouri, shortleaf pine often occurs with oaks in mixedwood ecosystems, though its prevalence is diminished from historic levels. With interest in restoring shortleaf pine, research is needed on specific strategies for using prescribed fire to promote shortleaf pine in mixed pine-oak ecosystems. We studied the survival and resprouting of shortleaf pine and oaks of different sizes following a prescribe...

This report describes the framework of a long-term project on the Santee Experimental Forest comparing hydrological processes and vegetation dynamics between two research watersheds: one formerly dominated by loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) and currently being restored to longleaf pine (P. palustris), and the other an unmanaged mixed pine-hardwood reference watershed. Along with descriptions of the watersheds and the silvicultural methods used in the longleaf pine restoration, this report provides baseline data on overstory conditions, soils, leaf area index, and coarse woody debris across the...

Armillaria solidipes, a naturally occurring fungus, is responsible for one of the most widespread root diseases in western North American forests. Armillaria root disease affects a broad range of tree species, and by the time visible symptoms appear, significant damage has often already occurred.

Rapid shifts in climate conditions can disrupt disturbance regimes and generate novel spatial conditions that have consequences for wildlife. In the montane Sierra Nevada range of California, USA, many species occur in sympatry, with local variation in elevation, climate conditions, and forest structure allowing species that may compete with each other to persist. However, shifting climate conditions in this region have potential impacts for species persistence and coexistence. From 2012 to 2015, a historic drought in California resulted in < 5% of expected snowpack and atypically warm...