Treesearch

Bat species are facing increasing threats due to climate change, large-scale changes in vegetation, windpower development, and white-nose syndrome, which make research on changes in bat communities essential for conservation planning in North America. The Seminole bat (Lasiurus seminolus) occurs throughout the southeastern United States, and recent evidence suggests they may be expanding their range in North America. I used museum records, publications, and data derived from mist-net surveys conducted by various individuals and organizations to determine changes in the seasonal and...

Pituophis ruthveni (Louisiana Pinesnake) is one of the rarest snakes in the United States (Conant 1956; Young and Vandeventer 1988; Rudolph et al. 2006). The historical range included portions of eastern Texas and western Louisiana (Sweet and Parker 1990; Reichling 1995). This species is generally associated with sandy, well-drained soils; open pine forests, especially longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) savannahs; moderate to sparse midstory; and a well-developed herbaceous understory dominated by grasses. Baird’s Pocket Gophers (Geomys breviceps) are also associated with loose, sandy soils,...

The genetic and physiological quality of seedlings is a critical component for longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) restoration, because planting genetic material that is adapted to environmental stress is required for long-term restoration success. Planting trees that exhibit high water-use efficiency (WUE) is a practice that could maximize this species’ survival and growth in a changing climate. Our study evaluates genetic variation in WUE and growth, as well as WUE-growth relationships, a key step to determine potential for breeding and planting trees with high WUE. We measured carbon...

Current operational fire spread models are mostly based on experimental results from dead, low moisture fuel beds and thus do not perform well when modeling fire behavior in live shrubs. Although computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models predict more reliable combustion behavior, they have a high computational cost, large grid sizes for landscape-scale simulations, and oversimplified combustion within a shrub. There is a need for intermediate-scale shrub combustion models that describe better solid fuel combustion properties and shrub architecture, which may serve as sub-grid models for...

Hawaii Conservation Alliance's Community Watershed Snapshot Project is a first step to understanding, analyzing and addressing humanity's relationship with its environment as part of the solution to taking care of Hawai`i. The Community Watershed Snapshot Project is a participatory and collaborative process to answer the burning question, “How healthy is your ahupua`a (watershed)?” Completing the snapshots gave our communities the opportunity to produce game plans aimed at improving ridge-to-reef ecosystems by addressing some of the priority issues that currently exist. Through this...

National Historic Trail management and planning is a complex undertaking, and completing National Environmental Policy Act-related impact analyses for these trails is particularly challenging. With the involvement of multiple agencies and planning initiatives, developing an understanding of the regulatory and planning framework alone can be an arduous undertaking. Adding to the complexity, the trails involve multiple, overlapping resources with a wide variety of potential data sources that may or may not be available. However, by first organizing information into several key categories and...

Uncertainty of future coastline geophysical conditions is increasingly magnified by the growing severity of acute and chronic weather events induced by climate change. In the face of these threats, 21st century coastal-human relationships will be characterized by temporality, response and recovery, and restoration. Understanding these dynamics will require visual exploration and application of theoretical conditions to future scenario generation. This research examines the development of an interdisciplinary three-dimensional visual modeling methodology to simulate erosion, storm surges,...

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) uses three-dimensional (3D) models viewable in Google Earth in addition to traditional visual resource analysis tools to plan, visualize, and mitigate new landscape-altering projects. A rough model can be made in minutes, allowing for quick and inexpensive pre-planning. Even when sites are inaccessible due to winter snow, timing, cost, or other access issues, modeling gives an approximation of the look of the final project and identifies scenery concerns. Alternatives can be worked through "on the fly" during meetings with stakeholders or in the field...

Abstracts: Visual resource stewardship conference proceedings: landscape and seascape management in a time of change.

With the recent approval of numerous large-scale transmission lines and pipelines that are now moving toward construction, it is critically important to ensure that these projects are implemented based on findings and assumptions of their associated impact analyses. Although this seems obvious, it has not always occurred successfully on past projects and can be challenging depending on how analysis findings and mitigation measures are applied and tracked. Specifically, degrees of impact and application of mitigation measures are often described in text and/or on forms that do not specifical...