Treesearch

South Carolina’s 12.9 million acres of forest cover 67 percent of the State. This forest land area has remained relatively stable for the past 15 years. Notable trends included timberland divestiture by forest industry, acquisition of that timberland by Timber Investment Management Organizations and Real Estate Investment Trusts, and a decrease in the average annual number of agricultural acres reverting to forest. Loblolly-shortleaf pine remains the predominant forest type followed by Oak-hickory forest. These forests hold slightly more than 26 billion cubic feet of wood volume and 636...

Ground-based timber harvesting systems are common in the United States. Harvesting machinery can negatively influence soils by increasing erosion and decreasing site productivity. Skid trails can become compacted and erosive. Slash applications to skid trails are effective for erosion control, yet few investigations have examined effects of slash on soil physical properties influenced by compaction. This research project has two objectives: (1) to compare and contrast the impacts of traffic resulting from a rubber-tired grapple skidder and a dozer using a variety of soil compaction...

In upland forests of the southern US, management is increasingly focussed on the restoration and maintenance of resilient structures and species compositions, with prescribed burning being the primary tool used to achieve these goals and objectives. In this study, we utilised an extensive dataset comprising 91 burn units and 210 plots across 13 National Park Service lands to examine the relationships between the probability of stem mortality (P(m)) 2 years after prescribed fire and stem size and direct fire effects for 10 common deciduous broadleaved species. Post-fire stem mortality...

Mast seeding is hypothesized to satiate seed predators with heavy production and reduce populations with crop failure, thereby increasing seed survival. Preference for red or white oak acorns could influence recruitment among oak species. We tested the predator satiation hypothesis, acorn preference, and predator size by concurrently measuring acorn production, mouse abundance, and white versus red oak acorn removal rates in exclosures allowing access by mice (HW), squirrels and smaller-sized vertebrates (WW), or all-sized vertebrates (C) for 12 years. Annual removal rate varied, but...

Long-term, accurate observations of atmospheric phenomena are essential for a myriad of applications, including historic and future climate assessments, resource management, and infrastructure planning. In Hawai‘i, climate data are available from individual researchers, local, State, and Federal agencies, and from large electronic repositories such as the National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). Researchers attempting to make use of available data are faced with a series of challenges that include: (1) identifying potential data sources; (2) acquiring data; (3) establishing...

Forest invasive alien species are a major threat to ecosystem stability and can have enormous economic and social impacts. For this reason, preventing the introduction of Asian gypsy moths (AGM; Lymantria dispar asiatica and L. d. japonica) into North America has been identified as a top priority by North American authorities. The AGM is an important defoliator of a wide variety of hardwood and coniferous trees, displaying a much broader host range and an enhanced dispersal ability relative to the already established European gypsy moth (L. d. dispar). Although molecular assays have been...

Abstract - Though the effects of introduced wood on fishes is widely studied for salmonids in upland coldwater streams, there are few studies on this topic conducted in the Coastal Plain of the southeastern US. This research gap is problematic because the introduction of wood is a critical component of efforts aimed at conserving the threatened fish diversity of the Coastal Plain, but managers lack data on the effects of installed wood on fish com- munities. Over a nearly 4-year study period, we contrasted the effects of introduced, small, wood bundles on the fish community in a channelized...

Forest wildfires consume fuel and are followed by post-fire fuel accumulation. This study examines post-fire surface fuel dynamics over 9 years across a wide range of conditions characteristic of California fires in dry conifer and hardwood forests. We estimated post-fire surface fuel loadings (Mg ha _1) from 191 repeatedly measured United States national inventory plots in dry conifer and hardwood stands of 49 California forest wildfires and identified differences across fire severity classes – low, moderate and high. No significant change in duff load was detected within the first 9...

Soils are Earth’s largest terrestrial carbon (C) pool, and their responsiveness to land use and management make them appealing targets for strategies to enhance C sequestration. Numerous studies have identified practices that increase soil C, but their inferences are often based on limited data extrapolated over large areas. Here, we combine 15,000 observations from two national-level databases with remote sensing information to address the impacts of reforestation on the sequestration of C in topsoils (uppermost mineral soil horizons). We quantify C stocks in cultivated, reforesting, and...

Poor condition of many streams and concerns about future droughts in the arid and semi-arid western USA have motivated novel restoration strategies aimed at accelerating recovery and increasing water resources. Translocation of beavers into formerly occupied habitats, restoration activities encouraging beaver recolonization, and instream structures mimicking the effects of beaver dams are restoration alternatives that have recently gained popularity because of their potential socioeconomic and ecological benefits. However, beaver dams and dam-like structures also harbor a history of social...