Treesearch

This document contains abstracts and papers of the oral and poster presentations offered at the 32nd USDA Interagency Research Forum on Invasive Species held in Annapolis, MD, in January 2024. The forum, sponsored by the Forest Service, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and Agricultural Research Service, illustrates the depth and breadth of studies supported by the agencies and their cooperators.

The USDA Forest Service supports research to promote forest health and protect trees from damaging agents, such as insects and disease. The Northern Research Station of the Forest Service collaborates with many partners to conduct research at local to international scales that offers insights and solutions to challenging forest health issues and helps meet unmet forest health needs. In 2024, the Northern Research Station published 65 publications related to forest health. This document reprints the abstracts for each publication and the 2023 regional forest health goals, threats, and needs...

Areas with landform characteristics that lead to more rapid runoff may be more vulnerable to increases in flood flows from more intense rainfall in the future. Those characteristics include fine-grained soils, low storage in lakes and wetlands, steep slopes, and high drainage densities. Landform characteristics that attenuate runoff include coarse-grained soils, high storage, gentle terrain, and low drainage densities. Groundwater recharge tends to be a dominant hydrologic process in such areas. Landtype associations (LTAs) are ecological units that relate closely with characteristics...

Background: Pollinators are declining due to habitat loss, pesticides, and climate change. Fire may be an effective management tool for enhancing pollinator habitat in fire-maintained ecosystems. Many studies have demonstrated that fire can promote understory plant biodiversity and cover, but considerably less is known about the effects of fire on floral abundance and pollinators, particularly in mixed-oak forests of the eastern USA. Our goal was to assess the long-term effects of repeated prescribed fire on floral abundance and the abundance of bumble bees, a globally important group of...

A new population of the Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis Motschulsky), an invasive species in North America since 1996, was discovered in Charleston County, South Carolina, in 2020. This population is the furthest south Asian longhorned beetle has established in North America. Previous models only estimate development time at this latitude; as such, we examined Asian longhorned beetle phenology in this novel climate. Over 24 consecutive months, we collected 153 eggs, 878 larvae, 37 pupae, and 1 unemerged adult (1,009 total specimens) from the federal quarantine zone in...

While research has documented clear regional differences in environmental attitudes and behaviors, less is understood about the role of shared moral values in shaping these variations. This gap poses a critical challenge to designing effective climate action strategies. Many environmental initiatives rely on “moral framing” to promote proenvironmental behavior, often targeting specific geographical areas like cities or counties. However, these strategies may falter if they fail to account for the unique moral landscapes that shape climate beliefs and actions in different regions. To...

Climate change affects nearly every aspect of the interdependent biophysical and social systems in California’s Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta. Mitigating and adapting to these effects will require effective climate governance: referring to the actors, rules, and processes through which decisions are made to prevent and respond to climate change. How governance systems effectively achieve these goals has become an increasingly central question in climate social science and climate policy debates, both at global and local scales. This paper reviews the state of science on climate governance...

Longitudinal data are essential to assessing change in environmental parameters over space and through time. This is particularly true in forest ecosystems where demographic patterns are controlled by many biotic and abiotic factors that may only be observed through repeated measures of tree (e.g., height, diameter, status), stand (e.g., tree density, litter depth), and site conditions (e.g., evidence of disturbance). Data from the United States Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis Program (FIA), support a variety of research and reporting efforts in...

An analysis of the urban forest in Portland, Oregon, revealed that this area had an estimated 7.7 million live trees (≥ 1.0 inch in diameter) or 2.7 million live trees (≥ 5.0 inches in diameter) across public and private lands. The most common tree species (≥ 5.0 inches in diameter) were bigleaf maple, Douglas-fir, northern white-cedar, western redcedar, and red alder. Trees in Portland were estimated to store about 1.6 million tons of carbon (equivalent to 5.9 million tons of carbon dioxide [CO2]) valued at $267.3 million. In addition, these trees were estimated to remove about 50,000...

A 2018 analysis of the urban forest in Washington, DC reveals that this area has an estimated 2 million live trees across all ownerships. The most common tree species by number are American beech, red maple, American holly, yellow-poplar, and American elm. Trees in Washington, DC are estimated to store about 487,163 tons of carbon (1.8 million tons of carbon dioxide [CO2]) valued at $83.1 million. In addition, it is estimated that these trees remove about 15,000 tons of carbon per year (or 55,000 tons CO2 per year, valued at $2.6 million per year, an amount roughly equivalent to the annual...