Treesearch

Closing watershed nitrogen budgets is difficult because inputs typically far exceed outputs. A leading hypothesis to explain this discrepancy is that retention is poorly constrained because a disproportionate amount of denitrification occurs in small portions of the landscape (hot spots) during brief hydrologic conditions (hot moments).

High frequency in situ nitrate data from three streams of varying hydrologic condition, land use, and watershed size were used to quantify the mass loading of nitrate to streams from two sources – groundwater discharge and event flow – at a daily time step for one year. These estimated loadings were used to quantify temporally-variable in-stream nitrate processing rates.

Dissolved organic matter (DOM) is recognized as a major component in the global carbon cycle and is an important driver of numerous biogeochemical processes in aquatic ecosystems, both in-stream and downstream in estuaries. This study sought to characterize chromophoric DOM (CDOM), dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and dissolved nutrients in major rivers and their tributaries of the South Carolina Coastal Plain to assess the impact of land cover,soils, and other factors on water quality.

Long-term land-use and land cover change and their associated impacts pose critical challenges to sustaining vital hydrological ecosystem services for future generations. In this study, a methodology was developed to characterize potential hydrologic impacts from future urban growth through time. Future growth is represented by housing density maps generated in decadal intervals from 2010 to 2100, produced by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Integrated Climate and Land-Use Scenarios (ICLUS) database. ICLUS developed future housing density maps by adapting the Intergovernmental...

The goal of this project was to investigate the relationship between the shallow, unconfined aquifer and woody vegetation at eight sites of the Congaree Observation Well Network at Congaree National Park near Hopkins, South Carolina. Eight piezometers with screens of 1.5-m length (top-of-screen depths ranging from 3.0 to 5.0 m below ground surface) along a 1.8-km cross-valley transect from the foot of a fluvial terrace and terminating near Cedar Creek in the national park.

In the southern Appalachians USA, the boundaries of riparian areas are often hard to define. Vegetation is often used as a riparian indicator and plays a key role in protecting water resources, but adequate knowledge of floristic responses to riparian disturbances is lacking. Our objective was to quantify floristic composition and diversity of the riparian communities before (2004) and one, two, and seven years after harvest treatments with varying buffer widths. The treatments were harvest distances of 0 m, 10 m, and 30 m away from the stream edge. Sites were harvested between 2005 and 2006.

Ecosystem restoration design is a relatively new field of work that requires multi-disciplinary expertise in the natural sciences. Although the field is new, federal agencies and public institutions have spent several decades and millions of dollars researching the sciences and methods that underly restoration activities. However, many restoration practitioners are either unaware of this vast body of knowledge or simply do not know how to apply it to these newproject types.

The Adirondacks of New York have high levels of mercury (Hg) bioaccumulation as demonstrated by a region-wide fish consumption advisory for children and women who may become pregnant. The source of this Hg is atmospheric deposition that originates from regional, continental, and global emissions.

Managing forests on the Cumberland Plateau escarpment for select desirable species can be particularly onerous due to the high diversity of dominant tree species. We implemented 5 treatments to alter species composition and structure in an effort to favor Quercus and maintain its dominance in the stands. Treatments were shelterwood prescriptions that in the first stage retained a percentage of the basal area (100, 75, 50, 25 and 0 percent retentions). After 9 growing seasons, the residual trees in all but the 0 percent retention treatment were removed. We installed permanent vegetation...

The business of marketing, promotions in particular, has changed substantially during the past decade. Physical means of promotion (e.g., newspapers, magazines, radio, billboards) have seen a decline, and the use of social media as a marketing tool has increased significantly. While a number of studies regarding the use of social media among Fortune 500 companies have been conducted, very limited information is available regarding social media use in the US forest products industry. This article presents part one of a two-part series and addresses the first three of the following five...