Treesearch

This paper serves as documentation for the General Equilibrium Model of Ecosystem Services (GEMES). GEMES is a regional computable general equilibrium model that is composed of values derived from natural capital and ecosystem services. It models households, producing sectors, and governments, linked to one another through commodity and factor markets. GEMES was designed to model the typical resource-dependent economy, and so it has several innovations not found in other general equilibrium models; for example, ecosystem services and natural capital are explicitly modeled, allowing for...

Native Americans have vital interests in promoting forest management decisions based on sound science and consistent with cultural values to sustain and conserve tribal natural resources. Advancing the next generation of natural resource professionals into key positions is essential to advance the self-determination of tribes; yet, there are unique challenges Native American students encounter when pursuing an advanced degree in natural resources. We formed an informal group of Native Americans who have been undergraduate and/or graduate students in natural resource fields to discuss their...

Tropical forests play an important role in regulating the global climate and the carbon cycle. With the changing temperature and moisture along the elevation gradient, the Luquillo Experimental Forest in Northeastern Puerto Rico provides a natural approach to understand tropical forest ecosystems under climate change. In this study, we conducted a soil translocation experiment along an elevation gradient with decreasing temperature but increasing moisture to study the impacts of climate change on soil organic carbon (SOC) and soil respiration. As the results showed, both soil carbon and...

Ongoing climate change may undermine the effectiveness of protected area networks in preserving the set of biotic components and ecological processes they harbor, thereby jeopardizing their conservation capacity into the future. Metrics of climate change, particularly rates and spatial patterns of climatic alteration, can help assess potential threats. Here, we perform a continent-wide climate change vulnerability assessment whereby we compare the baseline climate of the protected area network in North America (Canada, United States, Mexico - NAM) to the projected end-of-century climate...

Forest restoration often includes thinning to reduce tree density and improve ecosystem processes and function while also reducing the risk of wildfire or insect and disease outbreaks. However, one drawback of these restoration treatments is that slash is often burned in piles that may damage the soil and require further restoration activities. Pile burning is currently used on many forest sites as the preferred method for residue disposal because piles can be burned at various times of the year and are usually more controlled than broadcast burns. In many cases, fire can be beneficial to...

Rocky Mountain forests are highly important for their part in carbon cycling and carbon storage as well as ecosystem services such as water retention and storage and recreational values. These forests are shaped by complex interactions among vegetation, climate, and disturbances. Thus, climate change and shifting disturbances may lead to significant changes in species composition and biomass. Individual tree-based modeling allows various climate change scenarios and their effects on forest dynamics to be tested. We use an updated individual-based gap model, the University of Virginia...

Planted seedlings and saplings usually exhibit low survival and growth rates under dry Mediterranean environments, especially late-successional species such as Quercus. In this work, we studied the effects of straw and rock fragment mulches on the establishment conditions of holm oak (Quercus ilex L. subsp. ballota (Def.) Samp.) in SE Spain. Soil moisture was characterized at 4 soil depths (10, 20, 40, and 70 cm) for 3 treatments applied over 1 × 1 m plantation beds (rock-fragment cover [caliche], straw mulch, and control) where holm oak saplings were outplanted. Digital dendrometers were...

Forest ownership size is a continuous variable, albeit one with a distinctly nonnormal distribution. Although large corporate forest ownerships are expected to differ in terms of behavior and objectives from smaller corporate ownerships, there is no clear and unambiguous means of defined these two ownership groups. We examined the distribution of the ownership size variable and determined that approximately 11 percent of ownerships are statistical outliers in terms of total acreage owned. These ownerships differ significantly in terms of behavior (harvesting and tree planting) and objective...

This update provides an overview of forest resources in Illinois following an inventory by the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis program, Northern Research Station. Estimates are derived from field data collected using an annualized sample design and are updated yearly. Estimates of current variables such as area, volume, and biomass are based on 5,991 plots measured in 2011-2016. Change variables such as net growth, removals, and mortality are based on 5,915 plots measured in 2006-2011 and resampled in 2011-2016. See Bechtold and Patterson (2005), O'Connell et al. (2014),...

Wildfire area is predicted to increase with global warming. Empirical statistical models and process-based simulations agree almost universally. The key relationship for this unanimity, observed at multiple spatial and temporal scales, is between drought and fire. Predictive models often focus on ecosystems in which this relationship appears to be particularly strong, such as mesic and arid forests and shrublands with substantial biomass such as chaparral. We examine the drought–fire relationship, specifically the correlations between water-balance deficit and annual area burned, across...