Treesearch

Changing climates are creating more intense and frequent high-temperature events that could disrupt forest communities. In temperate forests, we have a relatively limited understanding of how trees are impacted by heat events, hindering our ability to predict the impacts of future heat waves. We conducted a community-level assessment of thermal safety margins in 11 hardwood tree species native to eastern North America. We used chlorophyll fluorescence to determine the critical heat tolerance of photosystem II (PSII) across 2 years in central Tennessee, USA. We focus on the temperature at...

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) has revolutionized wildlife monitoring by lowering barriers associated with data collection. Data from PAM can support adaptive management programs aimed at meeting multiple objectives in the face of uncertainty. Pairing PAM with acoustic classifiers capable of identifying sounds produced by wildlife can generate thousands of species detections across managed landscapes. However, such species detections represent both true- and false-positive detections, and human review is required to generate accurate detection data. Although collecting audio recordings...

In the western US, restoring forests to historical, fire-adapted conditions can reduce fire risk, but most fire-adapted restoration targets in California focus on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. By comparison, Eastern Sierra Jeffrey pine forests experience distinct climate and growing conditions, and both their historical structure and the effects of fire suppression are different from those of their west-side counterparts. In this study, our goals were (1) to use spatially-explicit forest reconstruction methods to estimate the historical, fire-adapted structure of...

Homeowner wildfire risk mitigation and preparedness are critical components of community wildfire readiness. This report describes the data collected through two efforts conducted in the Estes Valley Fire Protection District of Larimer County, Colorado, study area: (1) parcel-level rapid wildfire risk assessments performed by trained assessors and (2) homeowner surveys in which respondents provided self-assessments of their parcel-level wildfire risk. This project was undertaken to support Estes Valley Fire Protection District’s desire to enhance resident wildfire risk mitigation and...

Forest aboveground biomass (AGB) is a crucial indicator for carbon monitoring. This study presents a data-driven, cloud-based workflow for AGB density (AGBD) mapping using Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) data combined with Earth observation (EO) datasets. Focusing on the state of Alabama, the specific objectives were to: (1) evaluate and compare the effectiveness of ecoregionspecific models versus a statewide model for estimating AGBD, and (2) generate a 30-m AGBD map based on the optimal model and assess agreement with forest inventory and global-scale information. GEDI...

Using morphological assessments and phylogenetic inference, we described a new subterranean termite species in the genus Reticulitermesin southern California: Reticulitermes rustisp. nov. Genetic analyses utilizing 3 mitochondrial loci (16S rRNA, COI, and COII) and 7 microsatellites successfully distinguished the new species from 2 other Reticulitermesfound in southern California: R. hesperusBanks and R. tibialisBanks. Empirical measurements of key morphological characters further support the delineation of R. rustias a new species. While R. rustiis genetically closer to R. tibialis, its...

Understanding the response of tree species to disturbance is critical as climatic variability is projected to shift disturbance regimes, species distribution, and carbon allocation in the eastern US. Altered resource availability and microclimatic drivers bordering canopy gap edges may enhance tree growth. Our objective was to evaluate how this gap edge effect varies across dominant species groups in a southern Appalachian mixed hardwood forest. We assessed the effect of silvicultural canopy gaps, 0.15–1.09 ha in area, on overstory tree diameter growth four years after gap harvest....

Canopy openings create gradients in microclimate and can increase transpiration of individual trees bordering the gaps. This study evaluates overstory tree water use in a mature, temperate, upland hardwood forest three and four years after the establishment of 0.1 and 1 ha experimental gaps. Sap flux density (Js) was measured using thermal dissipation probes in 63 trees of dominant species groups, red maple (Acer rubrum), hickory (Carya spp.), tulip-poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera), and white oak and red oak groups (Quercus spp.), with increasing distance from experimental canopy gap edge...

Social equity, and the related topic of social vulnerability, is an important issue that is impacting many facets of society, including forests. A substantial portion, 39 %, of forests in the United States are owned by families, individuals, trusts, estates, and family partnerships, collectively referred to as family forest owners. There are many programs and services intended to help family forest owners conserve and better manage their land, but participation rates are relatively low, the efficacy of many programs has been called into question, and the social equitability of access is...

Managers grappling with questions about dead wood in productive, often high-volume, westside Pacific Northwest forests seek to balance wildlife habitat quality and fire hazard reduction, especially following wildfires which can both consume and generate exceptional quantities of dead wood. Longitudinal analysis of a large (n = 327) sample of permanent forest inventory monitoring plots measured before and repeatedly after wildfires and an equal-sized sample of comparable but unburned reference plots revealed post-fire trajectories of dead wood and factors that drive abundance of snags,...