Treesearch

The low-gradient coastal topography of the southeastern Atlantic Coastal Plain, coupled with large oceanic tidal amplitudes cause rivers that discharge to the coast to exhibit tidal influence of tides far inland. In those reaches, tidal-freshwater forested wetlands (TFFW) occupy floodplains which eventually transition to non-tidal, bottomland hardwood-forested ecosystems.

The longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) forests are important ecosystems in the southeastern USA because of their ecological and economic value. Since European settlement, longleaf pine ecosystems have dramatically declined in extent, to the degree that they are now listed as endangered ecosystems. Its sporadic seed production, which limits the frequency of natural regeneration, is identified as a significant factor in this decline. Previous studies did not characterize the complexity in cone production. Here a method of multiscale entropy is used to analyze long-term data for cone...

Over the past decade, wood-energy use in Alaska has grown dramatically. Since 2000, several dozen new wood-energy installations have been established, with numerous others in the design or construction phase. This case study report compares two wood-pellet heating systems in Juneau, Alaska. The Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority, a native housing authority that serves more than 27,000 tribal residents in 11 communities in the southeast, recently established a wood-pellet boiler to provide heating to their 10,000-square-foot warehouse. The Sealaska Corporation is an Alaska Native...

This report highlights key findings from the most recent (2001–2010) data collected by the Forest Inventory and Analysis program across all forest land in California, updating previously published findings from data collected from 2001 through 2005 (Christensen et al. 2008). We summarize and interpret basic resource information such as forest area, ownership, volume, biomass, and carbon stocks; forest structure and function topics such as biodiversity, forest age, and dead wood; disturbance information such as tree damage, fire, and invasive plants; and tree growth, mortality, and removals...

Urban green spaces provide an array of benefits, or ecosystem services, that support our physical, psychological, and social health. In many cases, however, these benefits are not equitably distributed across diverse urban populations. In this paper, we explore relationships between cultural ecosystem services provided by urban green space and the social determinants of health outlined in the United States Healthy People 2020 initiative. Specifically, we: (1) explore connections between cultural ecosystem services and social determinants of health; (2) examine cultural ecosystem services...

This guidebook describes major biological and physical attributes of the 433-ha (1,070-ac) Grayback Glades Research Natural Area. The area supports high- elevation examples of white fir–Shasta red fir (Abies concolor[Gord. + Glend]–Abies magnifica var. shastensis) forest along the crest of the Siskiyou Mountains in southwestern Oregon. High-elevation Sitka alder (Alnus viridis ssp. sinuata) glades are also represented on the site. Drainages support large individuals of Port Orford cedar (Chamaecyparis lawsoniana[A. Murray bis]).

The overall goal of the study was to evaluate effects of landscape features, barriers, on Brook Trout Salvelinus fontinalis population genetics and to identify a potential barrier height threshold where genetic diversity was reduced upstream of the barrier and differentiation and relatedness increase. We screened variation at eight microsatellite DNA loci within Brook Trout populations upstream and downstream of ten putative natural barriers ranging in height from 1.5 to 61 m to quantify allelic variation, differentiation (F ST), individual assignment probability (Q), and relatedness (r...

Interdisciplinary, collaborative research capable of capturing the feedbacks between biophysical and social systems can improve the capacity for sustainable environmental decision making. Networks of researchers provide unique opportunities to foster social-ecological inquiry. Although insights into interdisciplinary research have been discussed elsewhere, they rarely address the role of networks and often come from the perspectives of more senior scientists. We have provided graduate student perspectives on interdisciplinary degree paths from within the Long-Term Ecological Research...

In the 1950s, Coile published a simple classification of southeastern coastal soils using three characteristics: drainage class, sub-soil depth, and sub-soil texture. These ideas were used by Warren Stuck and Bill Smith to produce a matrix of soils with drainage class as one ordinate and subsoil texture as the second for the South Carolina coastal plain. Soils with sandy clay loam sub-soils (the most widely distributed soils on the coastal plain) were further divided by sub-soil depth into three categories: > 40 inches, 20-40 inches, and <20 inches. In 1974 Donald Colquhoun classified...

To determine the current range of water temperatures in the streams inhabited by California golden trout, Oncorhynchus mykiss aguabonita, I deployed and monitored water temperature recording probes from 2008 through 2013 in three meadows in the Golden Trout Wilderness (GTW). Ninety probes were placed in three meadow streams: Mulkey Creek in Mulkey Meadows (elevation 2838 m), South Fork Kern River in Ramshaw Meadows (2640 m), and Golden Trout Creek in Big Whitney Meadow (2963 m). Year-round water temperatures were successfully downloaded from 83 probes along with measurements of dissolved...