Treesearch

Ailanthus altissima ((Mill.) Swingle, tree-of-heaven, Chinese sumac, stink tree) is a nonnative invasive tree that is common throughout much of the eastern United States. It can invade and expand dramatically when forests are disturbed. Anecdotal evidence suggests that fire might facilitate its spread, but the relationship between fire and this prolific invasive tree is poorly understood. To better understand the impacts of fire on Ailanthus, we conducted a study at Tar Hollow State Forest in southeastern Ohio, USA where Ailanthus is widely distributed. Our objective was to quantify the...

Forests provide myriad ecosystem services, many of which are vital to local and regional economies. Consequently, there is a need to better understand how predicted changes in climate will impact forest dynamics and the implications of such changes for society as a whole. Here we focus on the impacts of climate change on Indiana forests, which are representative of many secondary growth broadleaved forests in the greater Midwest region in terms of their land use history and current composition. We found that predicted changes in climate for the state—warmer and wetter winters/springs and...

A recent review on the climbing behavior of plethodontid salamanders (McEntire 2016. Copeia 104:124–131) reported that many Plethodon are facultatively arboreal. Here, we report observations of climbing behavior for Plethodon punctatus, a species of conservation concern that is only found on Shenandoah Mountain and Great North Mountain in eastern West Virginia and western Virginia, USA.

The 606, Chicago's 2.7-mile, $95 million trail, is the only elevated, multiuse trail in the US. Opened to use in June 2015 after more than 15 years in planning and development, The 606 was designed to provide residents of nearby neighborhoods having major open space deficits with a safe, attractive place for recreation, fitness, commuting, and other purposes. Above all, The 606 was designed to be used, incorporating features to address concerns of local residents and facilitate walking, jogging, bicycling, and other activities. To better understand its use, we studied trends and patterns...

Reforestation with native species and resulting understory succession can exert important influences on soil organic matter (SOM) storage and chemistry, but a mechanistic understanding of these effects is lacking. We studied different aged Masson pine (Pinus massoniana L.) plantations with and without the understory fern, Dicranopteris dichotoma (Thunb.) Berhn., in subtropical China to assess how SOM over a 30 year sequence of pine growth and fern expansion. To do this, we measured total SOM, lignin-derived phenols, soil carbon (total C and 13C), soil nitrogen (total N and 15N), and soil...

We studied benthic macroinvertebrate communities in 12 mid‐elevation mountain streams in the Sierra Nevada, California. Data were collected at nine times (seven springs and two autumns) over a 14‐year period of variable hydrological conditions, including years of flood and extreme unprecedented drought. The taxonomic and trait structures of communities were similar during wet and average springs but became increasingly different as drought continued and smaller streams became intermittent. The density of total invertebrates, primarily chironomids, increased during the drought years, but...

The lateral destination and potential decomposition of soil organic matter mobilized by soil erosion depends on factors such as the amount and type of precipitation, topography, the nature of mobilized organic matter (OM), potential mixing with mineral particles, and the stabilization mechanisms of the soil OM. This study examined how the relative distribution of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) in different OM fractions varied in soils from eroding slopes and in eroded sediments in a series of low‐order forested catchments in the western Sierra Nevada, California. We found that precipitation...

Effectively managing invasive plants across forested landscapes requires voluntary control by 10.7 million family forest owners (FFOs) who own 36% of forestlands in the USA. The literature on individual and collective invasive plant management has focused on farmers, ranchers, urban gardeners and community residents, with less attention on forestlands and the role of FFOs. By analyzing survey data from 1422 FFOs in Indiana, USA, we provide a thorough assessment of their awareness, perceptions, behaviors and intentions towards invasive plants; as well as their needs and challenges. In our...

Environmental issues are often discussed in purity-related terms. For instance, pollution, contamination, toxicity, and degradation are all concepts that can evoke notions of (im)purity in an environmental context. In this paper, we assess the efficacy of purity-based norms as drivers of environmentally sustainable behavior. First, using a social media-based environmental cleanup campaign as a test case, we find that purity-based norms increase participation in the campaign. We then replicate and extend these findings in three behavioral experiments, finding that purity-based interventions...

As climate change is expected to significantly affect agricultural systems globally, agricultural farm advisors have been increasingly recognized as an important resource in helping farmers address these challenges. While there have been many studies exploring the climate change belief and risk perceptions as well as behaviors of both farmers and agricultural farm advisors, there are very few studies that have explored how these perceptions relate to actual climate impacts in agriculture. Here we couple survey data from United States Department of Agriculture farm service employees (n = 6,...