Treesearch

In 2013, for the first time in United States history, more than 50% of children younger than age one were minorities. Latinos are the nation’s largest-growing minority group, and by 2050 are estimated to comprise 28% of the total U.S. population. Despite the exponential growth of minorities generally and Latinos in particular, land-management agencies have been slow in responding to these major racial and ethnic demographic shifts, particularly within the context of outdoor recreation activities. The purpose of this article is to show how Latino Outdoors is providing diverse and family-focu...

We evaluated how differences between two empirical resistance models for the same geographic area affected predictions of gene flow processes and genetic diversity for the Mexican spotted owl (Strix occidentalis lucida). The two resistance models represented the landscape under lowand high-fragmentation parameters. Under low fragmentation, the landscape had larger but highly concentrated habitat patches, whereas under high fragmentation, the landscape had smaller habitat patches that scattered across a broader area. Overall habitat amount differed little between resistance models. We...

Goals of fostering ecological resilience are increasingly used to guide U.S. public land management in the context of anthropogenic climate change and increasing landscape disturbances. There are, however, few operational means of assessing the resilience of a landscape or ecosystem. We present a method to evaluate resilience using simulation modeling. In this method, we use historical conditions (e.g., in North America, prior to European settlement), quantified using simulation modeling, to provide a comparative reference for contemporary conditions, where substantial departures indicate...

Forest ecosystems provide services that can be promoted by state property tax incentive programs. A 50-state review in 2014–2015 determined that such programs were used to foster services such as protection of soil and water resources, habitat for fish and wildlife, aesthetically pleasing landscapes, and the production of timber and wood fiber. The review determined that nearly 210 million acres (85 million hectares [ha]) were enrolled in 58 different state property tax programs, an estimated 44% of private forest area eligible for enrollment. Over 3.85 million participants benefited from...

Renewable natural resources that have biological constraints on reproduction and are open-access may be subjected to intense harvest activity that limits regeneration, potentially leading to a backward-bending long-run supply curve. Empirical evidence of such supply abnormalities has been found for some open-access fish species but not yet for non-timber forest products (NTFPs). We describe the theory of the backward-bending long-run supply and how such a supply relationship could produce multiple market equilibria, affecting regulatory outcomes. An empirical example is provided to test...

This resource update provides an overview of the forest resources in Pennsylvania based on inventories conducted by the USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the Northern Research Station. Estimates are based on field data collected using the FIA annualized sample design and are updated yearly. Information about the national and regional FIA program is available online at http://fia.fs.fed.us. FIA began annual inventories in Pennsylvania in 2000. For the 2017 inventory, estimates of current resource attributes, such as area, volume, and biomass, are based on...

Conserving tidal-marsh bird communities requires strategies to address continuing pressures from human development to the effects of increasing rates of sea-level rise. Knowing tidal-marsh bird distributions and population sizes are important for developing these strategies. In the Northeast United States, where estimates of sea-level rise are 3 times higher than the global average, 5 bird species are tidalmarsh specialists: clapper rail (Rallus crepitans), willet (Tringa semipalmata), Nelson’s sparrow (Ammospiza nelsoni), saltmarsh sparrow (A. caudacuta), and seaside sparrow (A. maritima)....

Quantifying shrub biomass can assist in natural resource management decision making. Nonlinear mixed effect models (NMEM) were developed to predict total aboveground biomass as well as biomass in leaves, 1-hour, 10-hour, and 100 or more hour fuel classes for seven species of shrubs common to the northeastern California. Using crown area as a predictor, an allometric (power) model was used as a base model. Coefficients varied by species, component, and by a nested combination of these random effects. The results showed that NMEM that used shrub species as random effect performed better than...

Fungi play a key role cycling nutrients in forest ecosystems but the mechanisms remain uncertain. To clarify the enzymatic processes involved in wood decomposition, metatranscriptomics and metaproteomics of extensively decayed lodgepole pine by RNAseq and LC-MS/MS, respectively. Following de novo metatranscriptome assembly, 52,011 were searched for functional domains and homology to database entries.

Disturbance-induced mortality events in forest ecosystems generate significant hotspots in biogeochemical cycles. These events occur sporadically across the landscape and contribute to large sources of error in terrestrial biosphere carbon models, which have yet to capture the full complexity of biotic and abiotic factors driving ecological processes in the terrestrial environment. The balance between production of stable soil organic matter and respiration from decomposing biomass greatly influences whether temperate forests remain modest carbon sinks or are transformed into carbon...