Treesearch

Deliberation – the process of group discussion and consideration – has been increasingly integrated to valuation of ecosystem services. In an online stated preference survey on the Fanjing Mountain National Nature Reserve in the Southwestern China, we assessed participants' willingness to pay (WTP) for cultural services (non-material benefits gained through interacting with nature, including its ecological and geological elements and characteristics) before and after deliberation. However, among the initial participants, only a subset completed deliberation and the full survey. This...

Large wildfires, the dominant natural disturbance type in North American forests, can cause significant damage to human infrastructure. One well-known approach to reduce the threat of wildfires is the strategic removal of forest fuels in linear firebreaks that segment forest landscapes into distinct compartments. However, limited human and financial resources can make it difficult to plan compartmentalization effectively. In this study, we developed a simulation-optimization approach to assist with the planning of wildfire risk mitigation efforts in the Red Rock-Prairie Creek area of...

Many southern California residents use urban-proximate national forests to meet their recreation needs, but with climate change and increased forest popularity, displacement is of concern due to the potential for degraded conditions and/or closures. Displacement could result in recreationists completely foregoing the national forests for other forms of leisure activities. To guide would-be visitors to suitable alternative recreation experiences when they are unable to recreate as they want due to undesirable conditions (e.g., crowding, poor resource conditions), a better understanding of...

Eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) is a foundational species in forests across the eastern United States. Hemlock trees provide critical ecosystem services, such as shading for streams, regulation of water temperature, and wildlife habitat for many species. Hemlocks are also economically important for the forest products industry, especially for paper and pulpwood. The invasive insect, hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA, Adelges tsugae Annand), has killed millions of hemlocks across the eastern United States and altered forest dynamics since it was first discovered in 1950. In response, forest...

Aim: Forest disturbances are a natural ecological process, but climate and land-use change are altering disturbance regimes at an unprecedented rate, posing significant threats to biological communities and the species of concern. Our aim was to develop an automated habitat monitoring system for the Southern Sierra Nevada Distinct Population Segment of fisher (Pekania pennanti) in California, USA, to investigate long-term habitat trends and the effects of a recent megadrought and numerous megafires on fisher habitat.Location: Southern Sierra Nevada, California, USA.Methods: We used...

Mature and old-growth forests provide critically important ecosystems services and wildlife habitats, but they are being lost at a rapid rate to uncharacteristic mega-disturbances. We developed a simulation system to project time-to-extinction for mature and old-growth forest habitat in the Sierra Nevada, California, USA. The simulation parameters were derived from a 1985-2022 empirical time-series of habitat for the southern Sierra Nevada fisher (Pekania pennanti), an endangered native mammal and old-forest obligate that has seen a 50 % decline in its habitat over the past decade from a...

The Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service annually funds projects under the Evaluation Monitoring (EM) component of FHM. Projects generally are intended to determine the extent, severity, and causes of undesirable changes in forest health. This component of FHM provides opportunities to delve deeper into observed forest health changes than is often possible as part of standard monitoring activities. When an EM project is completed, researchers are asked to provide a concise summary of the project. These summaries were previously...

Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) is a widespread and locally dominant shrub throughout many ecosystems in western North America. A. tridentata ssps. tridentata and wyomingensis are two subspecies whose populations occupy the warm-arid regions of the species range and whose trailing edge is threatened by climate change. Previous studies have presented conflicting results in relation to the genetic control of physiological variation in A. tridentata. Understanding how different genetic factors contribute to physiological variation can provide insight into how these two subspecies may...

Circadian rhythms are a mechanism by which species adapt to environmental variability and fundamental to understanding species behavior. However, we lack data and a standardized framework to accurately assess and compare temporal activity for species during rapid ecological change. Through a global network representing 38 countries, we leveraged 8.9 million mammalian observations to create a library of 14,587 standardized diel activity estimates for 445 species. We found that less than half the species’ estimates were in agreement with diel classifications from the reference literature and...

Aim: Despite unprecedented environmental change due to anthropogenic pressure, recent work has found increasing dissimilarity due to turnover but no overall trend in species diversity through time at the local scale. Functional diversity provides a potentially powerful alternative approach for understanding community composition by linking shifts in species identity to the characteristics that underpin ecosystem processes. Here we present the first multitaxa, multisystem analysis of functional diversity and composition through time.Location: Global, with a North American focus.Time Period:...