Treesearch

Background. The increased interest in why and how trees die from fire has led to several syntheses of the potential mechanisms of fire-induced tree mortality. However, these generally neglect to consider experimental methods used to simulate fire behaviour conditions. Aims. To describe, evaluate the appropriateness of and provide a historical timeline of the different approaches that have been used to simulate fire behaviour in fire-induced tree mortality studies. Methods. We conducted a historical review of the different actual and fire proxy methods that have been used to further our...

Soil respiration plays a key role in regulating ecosystem CO2 emissions and atmospheric concentrations. However, because it is highly sensitive to the environment and has large temporal and spatial variability, its contribution to the global carbon cycle remains highly uncertain. Recent advances in ecosystem process models have uniquely constrained soil respiration rates, largely based on results from tracing ecosystem CO2 losses using radioisotope and stable isotope methods. However, the computational requirements of process-based models at large scales are costly, limiting their applicati...

Temperate agroforestry practices offer various ecological, social, and economic benefits. However, data surrounding drivers of adoption for agroforestry in the U.S. remains limited. A survey of Missouri agricultural land managers was conducted to determine the extent of agroforestry adoption in the state, current knowledge and perceptions of agroforestry, and interest in implementing agroforestry practices. A choice experiment model was employed to assess participants’ willingness to accept (WTA) payment for adopting agroforestry practices and to determine land managers’ valuation of...

Prescribed fires can be a significant source of air pollution with negative consequences for public health and safety. Therefore, smoke management is a key element in the planning and execution of prescribed fires. Emission factors (EF), which quantify the relative abundance of pollutants released by wildland fires, are a needed input for the emission calculations which are essential to effective smoke management. A key challenge when conducting prescribed fires near sensitive receptors such as roadways, communities, and outdoor recreational sites, is limiting smoke production from...

The role of a plant root system in resource acquisition is relevant to confront drought events caused by climate change. Accordingly, nursery practices like phosphorous (P) fertilization and root pruning have been shown to modify root architecture; however, their combined benefits require further investigation in Mediterranean species. We evaluated the effect of applied P concentrations (0, 15, 60, and 120 mg L-1 P) with or without chemical (copper) root pruning (WCu,WoCu, respectively) in Aristotelia chilensis and Quillaja saponaria on morpho-physiological and root architecture traits....

Environmental DNA (eDNA) analysis of terrestrial substrates, such as soil and sand, is a rapid and potentially cost-effective way to monitor rare wildlife species. A promising use-case in the southeastern United States is provided by the eastern indigo snake (Drymarchon couperi), for which accurate monitoring has been challenging due to large home ranges and low-density populations. However, knowledge gaps regarding eDNA deposition and persistence in this system currently limit our ability to apply eDNA sampling effectively at the landscape scale. To overcome some of these gaps, we used an...

Wildfire regimes are changing rapidly with widespread increase in the intensity, frequency, and duration of fire activity, especially in the western United States. Limited studies explore the impacts of wildfires on aquatic taxa and few focus on lentic habitats that are essential for amphibians, many of which are of conservation concern. We capitalized on existing pre-fire surveys for anuran species and resurveyed a random subset of wetlands across a gradient of soil burn severity to investigate the short-term effects of wildfire on a relict population of wood frogs in the southern Rocky...

Severe wildfires often increase nitrogen (N) losses from burned forests which can impact downstream water quality, water treatability, and aquatic habitat. Woody mulch is commonly applied to mitigate post-fire soil erosion and enhance revegetation, but it is also a source of labile carbon (C) that can stimulate microbial immobilization and limit N release to soil and streams. The objective of our study was to evaluate whether woody mulch application could reduce N losses from soils and export from watersheds affected by the 2020 Cameron Peak fire in Northern Colorado, USA. Our assessment...

Soil carbon is an important component of the terrestrial carbon cycle and could be augmented through improved soil management to mitigate climate change. However, data gaps for numerous regions and a lack of understanding of the heterogeneity of biogeochemical processes across diverse soil landscapes hinder the development of large-scale representations of soil organic matter (SOM) dynamics. In this Perspective, we outline how understanding soil formation processes and complexity at the landscape scale can inform predictions of soil organic matter (SOM) cycling and soil carbon sequestration...

Effective wildfire prevention includes actions to deliberately target different wildfire causes. However, the cause of an increasing number of wildfires is unknown, hindering targeted prevention efforts. We developed a machine learning model of wildfire ignition cause across the western United States on the basis of physical, biological, social, and management attributes associated with wildfires. Trained on wildfires from 1992 to 2020 with 12 known causes, the overall accuracy of our model exceeded 70% when applied to out‐of-sample test data. Our model more accurately separated wildfires...