Treesearch

The forests and associated wood products of the Pacific coast region (PCR)—British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California—play an important role in mitigating climate change by storing carbon long term in durable wood products and providing a significant share of non-fossil fuel-based building materials and other renewable products. Understanding the supply chains and flows of these wood products into and out of the PCR is essential for supporting this goal. The objective of this research paper is to quantify the trade flows in the four PCR jurisdictions. This analysis focuses on the...

Anthropogenic climate change is altering patterns of extreme weather events across the planet, with far-ranging consequences for biodiversity. Increases in the frequency, duration, and severity of droughts are anticipated to substantially impact natural ecosystems. Here, we predicted the extent to which 1221 terrestrial vertebrates in the contiguous United States will be increasingly exposed to annual (12-month) and prolonged (36-month) drought, under three global climate models and two representative concentration pathways. On average, a377% increase in annual drought exposure and a 579%...

Constructed soils are soils that are created with a mixture of various materials. An innovative soil exchange program - the Clean Soil Bank (CSB) in New York City allows recycling of clean glacial outwash sediments excavated from depth at construction sites. One previous study showed that soils constructed from CSB sediment and compost can effectively support crop growth in community gardens, but no research has been conducted on its potential usage as a medium for tree growth. Moreover, biochar has been used to improve soil quality, but its efficacy for street trees incorporated into...

Urban forests in coastal regions are vulnerable to changing climate conditions, especially sea level rise (SLR). Such climate change impacts add complexity for urban forest managers as they make decisions related to tree species selection. The New York City (NYC) Parks Department manages over 660,000 street trees, many of which occupy sites that are susceptible to saltwater flooding. In order to build a resilient urban tree canopy in these flood-prone zones, we ranked tree species based on their overall tolerance to coastal vulnerability factors such as high winds, salt spray, and soil...

Differential use of resources among bird species has been examined extensively in diet and nesting sites, but few studies have assessed this regarding avian nest materials. We assessed the structure and composition of nests in a group of co‐existing passerine shrubland birds at a site in Massachusetts, USA. We found, measured, collected, and dissected nests, and then weighed nest materials in morphological groups (e.g., bark, twigs, feathers) to determine if our seven focal species were using different nest materials. Among species, we compared proportional material masses in complete...

La vertiente del pacifico de Nicaragua contiene areas naturales como el bosque seco, esta zona, aunque es un mosaico de ecosistemas y microclimas predominan las reducidas precipitaciones con una marcada epoca seca, yes importante para la diversidad aviar por las especies linicas que contiene. Este contiene mas del 50% de las especies reportadas en Nicaragua, ademas de un relevante numero de investigaciones que se han llevado a cabo historicamente y mas activamente en los ultimos 30 años . Esta zona muestra una mezcla d e aves presentes en otras macroregiones como la vertiente del Caribe...

The timing of climate adaptation decisions can have substantial consequences for the assessment of climate damages. Since weather variability can create risks for natural resource management that differ across adaptation choices, such variability has the potential to alter the speed of climate adaptation. This paper estimates the effect of weather variability on the timing of adaptation decisions of forest landowners in the Eastern United States. A discrete-choice econometric model of forest management is estimated and used in a bio-economic simulation that shows how variability in cold...

Prescribed fire is an essential strategy employed by natural resource managers to serve ecological objectives of fire management. However, limited operational resources, environmental conditions, and competing goals result in a finite number of burn days, which need to be allocated towards maximizing the overall benefits attainable with fire management. We developed a decision-support framework and a burn prioritization model for wetlands and wildland-urban interfaces in Everglades National Park (Florida, USA). The model included criteria relative to the conservation of plant communities,...

Introduced species may exhibit variations in their preferred climatic niches between their native and introduced ranges, which can have important implications for the transferability of distribution models. In the Himalayan ecoregion, little is known about the geographic distribution and climatic niche overlap between native and introduced cold-water species. Here, we used the COUE (centroid shift, overlap, unfilling, and expansion) framework to explore the invasive potential of rainbow (Oncorhynchus mykiss) and brown (Salmo trutta fario) trout and corresponding climatic niche overlap with...