Treesearch

Movements of individuals within and among populations help to maintain genetic variability and population viability. Therefore, understanding landscape connectivity is vital for effective species conservation. The snow leopard is endemic to mountainous areas of central Asia and occurs within 12 countries. We assess potential connectivity across the species’ range to highlight corridors for dispersal and genetic flow between populations, prioritizing research and conservation action for this wide-ranging, endangered top-predator.

Livestock predation by tiger and leopard in Bhutan is a major threat to the conservation of these felids. Conflict mitigation planning would benefit from an improved understanding of the spatial pattern of livestock kills by the two predators.

Multispecies and multiscale habitat suitability models (HSM) are important to identify the environmental variables and scales influencing habitat selection and facilitate the comparison of closely related species with different ecological requirements. Objectives This study explores the multiscale relationships of habitat suitability for the pine (Martes martes) and stone marten (M. foina) in northern Spain to evaluate differences in habitat selection and scaling, and to determine if there is habitat niche displacement when both species coexist.

Scale dependence of bat habitat selection is poorly known with few studies evaluating relationships among landscape metrics such as class versus landscape, or metrics that measure composition or configuration. This knowledge can inform conservation approaches to mitigate habitat loss and fragmentation.

Applications of entropy and the second law of thermodynamics in landscape ecology are rare and poorly developed. This is a fundamental limitation given the centrally important role the second law plays in all physical and biological processes. A critical first step to exploring the utility of thermodynamics in landscape ecology is to define the configurational entropy of a landscape mosaic. In this paper I attempt to link landscape ecology to the second law of thermodynamics and the entropy concept by showing how the configurational entropy of a landscape mosaic may be calculated.

Scale is the lens that focuses ecological relationships. Organisms select habitat at multiple hierarchical levels and at different spatial and/or temporal scales within each level. Failure to properly address scale dependence can result in incorrect inferences in multi-scale habitat selection modeling studies.

There is currently a request from landowners in southeastern USA to provide a non-destructive tool that can differentiate the quality between stands of 25 and 30 years of age subjected to different thinning treatments. A typical site with various thinning regimes was used to vary the wood quality and to determine whether acoustics had the ability to seperate for differences at a given age and local geography. A stand at age 29 with three different spacing (prior thinning) levels was chosen. Three hundred trees (100 per treatment) were randomly selected and acoustically tested for sound...

Roads, while central to the function of human society, create barriers to animal movement through collisions and habitat fragmentation. Barriers to animal movement affect the evolution and trajectory of populations. Investigators have attempted to use traffic volume, the number of vehicles passing a point on a road segment, to predict effects to wildlife populations approximately linearly and along taxonomic lines; however, taxonomic groupings cannot provide sound predictions because closely related species often respond differently. We assess the role of wildlife behavioral responses to...

This publication provides an overview of forest resources in Maryland based on inventories conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the Northern Research Station. From 2004-2013, FIA employed an annual inventory, measuring 20 percent of all sample plots each year in Maryland. Beginning in 2014, FIA is on a 7-year cycle, inventorying 14.3 percent of all plots annually. For the 2015 inventory, estimates for current variables such as area, volume, and biomass, are based on 944 plots sampled from 2009-2015. Change variables such as net growth,...

The Sustainable Forestry and African American Land Retention Program is a comprehensive effort to address the long-standing problem of underparticipation of African Americans in forest management. We conducted rapid appraisal baseline research for pilot projects in this program in three Southern states using a carefully selected purposive sample to enhance our understanding of minority landownership and forest management. We found that whereas land represents an important family resource across generations, heirs’ property status often results in insecure property ownership, and most...