Treesearch

Scholarship on the ecosystem services provided by urban forests has focused on regulating and supporting services, with a growing body of research examining provisioning and cultural ecosystem services from farms and gardens in metropolitan areas. Using the case of New York, New York, USA, we propose a method to assess the supply of potential provisioning ecosystem services from species and spaces other than those explicitly designated for food production. We analyze the abundance and spatial distribution of trees and shrubs with known uses for food, medicine, craft, and other purposes...

Climate adaptation planning and implementation are likely to increase rapidly within the forest sector not only as climate continues to change but also as we intentionally learn from real-world examples. We sought to better understand how adaptation is being incorporated in land management decision-making across diverse land ownership types in the Midwest by evaluating project-level adaptation plans from a suite of forest management projects developed through the Climate Change Response Framework. We used quantitative content analysis to evaluate 44 adaptation-planning documents developed...

Increasing air temperature, through its influence on soil moisture, is expected to cause gradual changes in the abundance and distribution of tree, shrub, and grass species throughout the Northern Rockies, with drought tolerant species becoming more competitive. The earliest changes will be at ecotones between lifeforms (e.g., upper and lower treelines). Ecological disturbance, including wildfire and insect outbreaks, will be the primary facilitator of vegetation change, and future forest landscapes may be dominated by younger age classes and smaller trees. High-elevation forests will be...

The United States has passed legislation aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions (United States Congress, 2005; United States Congress, 2007; EPA, 2015). In order to achieve the goals set by these commitments, significant amounts of fossil fuel energy will need to be replaced with renewable energy. There are multiple renewable technologies from which to choose, and each option has associated costs and benefits. In order to maximize the social benefits from investments in renewable energy technologies, the external costs and benefits must be quantified and included in the decision making...

Climate change is expected to result in substantial ecological impacts across the globe. These impacts are uncertain but there is strong consensus that they will almost certainly affect fire regimes and vegetation. In this study, we evaluated how climate change may influence fire frequency, fire severity, and broad classes of vegetation in mountainous ecoregions of the contiguous western US for early, middle, and late 21st century (2025, 2055, and 2085, respectively). To do so, we employed the concept of a climate analog, whereby specific locations with the best climatic match between one...

Abstract Assessing the relationships between weather patterns and the likelihood of fire occurrence in the Caribbean has not been as central to climate change research as in temperate regions, due in part to the smaller extent of individual fires. However, the cumulative effect of small frequent fires can shape large landscapes, and fire-prone ecosystems are abundant in the tropics. Climate change has the potential to greatly expand fire-prone areas to moist and wet tropical forests and grasslands that have been traditionally less fire-prone, and to extend and create more temporal variabili...

Sugar maple, an abundant and highly valued tree species in eastern North America, has experienced decline from soil calcium (Ca) depletion by acidic deposition, while beech, which often coexists with sugar maple, has been afflicted with beech bark disease (BBD) over the same period. To investigate how variations in soil base saturation combine with effects of BBD in influencing stand composition and structure, measurements of soils, canopy, subcanopy, and seedlings were taken in 21 watersheds in the Adirondack region of NY (USA), where sugar maple and beech were the predominant canopy...

In 1950, the US Forest Service initiated a cutting practice level (CPL) study on the Penobscot Experimental Forest in Maine on the basis of findings of a national appraisal of forestland management. Silvicultural treatments, including the selection system with 5- and 15-year cutting cycles, fixed diameter-limit cutting, and variants of commercial clearcutting, were chosen to represent "High-order," "Good," "Fair," and "Poor" cutting practices as then defined for eastern spruce–fir (Picea–Abies; northern conifer) forests. After 60 years, selection treatments have maintained a wide distributi...

American Indian tribes have inherent rights to national forestland and resources codified in treaties, the US Constitution, statutes, Presidential Executive Orders, and case law. These rights require a government-togovernment relationship between each tribe and the US Forest Service (USFS), which recognizes federal trust responsibilities and tribal sovereignty. This is implemented through government-to-government consultation. Along with consultation, the USFS seeks to create opportunities to work in partnership with tribes to support natural resource management for mutual benefit. The...

Childhood-nature experiences have lifelong effects on environmental citizenship and commitment to nature-based activities. But, it is unclear whether, and to what extent, the different mechanisms through which children and youth experience nature are associated with these outcomes. To test these associations, an online questionnaire assessing mechanisms of childhood exposure to nature, adulthood environmental citizenship and commitment to nature-based activities, and demographic variables was sent to the email addresses of 509 employees of the United States Department of Agriculture,...