Treesearch

In times of economical crisis, rewilding can be a less costly conservation management approach, able to generate economic value from wild lands and to rural communities. Simultaneously, improvement of connectivity between protected areas was identified as a global priority for conservation. Allying the rewilding concept and connectivity concern, a model for identification of less disturbed corridors for wildlife was designed. Less disturbed corridors can be serious candidates become rewilding areas due to their already low human pressure for wildlife. Accordingly, it was asked of experts...

Rewilding is a relatively new nature conservation strategy, especially in Europe, where there are virtually no experiences put into full practice yet. This approach is based on the restoration of natural processes as the main drivers of ecosystem dynamics. When developing this concept in Spain, it would be important to analyse why it is interesting and where it is possible. In this paper we provide seven main arguments that make rewilding an interesting option in the Spanish context: six conceptual (ethicalconservationist, functional, scientific, aesthetic-artistic-spiritual, educational,...

This paper reflects on the socio-political conceptualization of ‘Western Iberia', one of Rewilding Europe's first pilot areas. Drawing from Actor Network Theory and social theories discussing Politics of Scale, we illustrate how ‘Western Iberia' is continuously being negotiated through practices in different sites within / outside its geographical boundaries. We identify five different versions of ‘Western Iberia' for illustrative purposes to claim that there is not one ‘Western Iberia' but many. We conclude that these multiple versions are contingent and produced in networks of actors,...

In many watersheds, including the Great Lakes and Lake Tahoe Basins, two basins where the land cover is dominated by forests, the pollutants of concern are fine sediments and phosphorus. Forest runoff is generally low in nitrogen, and coarse sediment does not adversely impact the quality of lake waters. Predictive tools are needed to estimate not simply sediment, but fine sediment (

With increasing public demand for more intensive biomass utilization from forests, the concerns over adverse impacts on productivity by nutrient depletion are increasing. We remeasured the 1974 site of the Forest Residues Utilization Research and Development in northwestern Montana to investigate long-term impacts of intensive biomass utilization on aspects of site productivity. The historical experiment was implemented in a western larch (Larix occidentalis Nutt.) forest at three biomass utilization levels (high, medium, and low) combined with prescribed post-harvest burning treatments...

Optimum fertilization levels are often determined solely from nursery growth responses. However, it is the performance of the seedling on the outplanting site that is the most important. For Pinus species seedlings, little information is known about the field performance of plants cultured with different nutrient rates, especially with exponential fertilization. In this study, Chinese pine (Pinus tabulaeformis Carr.) seedlings grown in 187 ml containers were fertilized exponentially in 6 treatments ranging from 10 to 120 mg N seedling-1 for 25 weeks before outplanting. Dry mass and N...

Pyrenophora semeniperda is a generalist fungal pathogen that occurs primarily on monocot seed hosts. It is in the phylum Ascomycota, which includes both self-compatible (homothallic) and self-incompatible (heterothallic) species. Homothallic fungal species contain complementary mating-type (MAT) idiomorphs in a single unikaryotic strain, while heterothallic strains contain a single MAT idiomorph requiring interaction between strains of complementary mating-types for sexual reproduction to occur. Because the majority of P. semeniperda strains contained either MAT1 or MAT2, this species was...

Vegetation surveys at Zion National Park (Zion), Utah, have contributed to our understanding of plant community patterns and their relationship to environmental factors. Previous authors used vegetation plot data to characterize vegetation types at Zion following conventional procedures that emphasize spatial discreteness and dominant species. We developed and applied an alternative approach for community characterization that emphasizes nondiscrete presence-absence patterns and is compatible with the individualistic concept. We reanalyzed existing plot data from Zion using coalition...

Management of many dry conifer forests in western North America is focused on promoting resilience to future wildfires, climate change, and land use impacts through restoration of historical patterns of forest structure and disturbance processes. Historical structural data provide models for past resilient conditions that inform the design of silvicultural treatments and help to assess the success of treatments at achieving desired conditions. We used dendrochronological data to reconstruct nonspatial and spatial forest structure at 1860 in fourteen 0.5 ha plots in lower elevation (∼1900–21...

Water is a critical resource for humans and ecological systems in the western United States. Aquatic ecosystems including lakes, rivers, riparian areas and wetlands, are at high risk of climate impacts because they experience relatively high exposure to climate fluctuations and extremes. In turn, impacts arising from climate change are far reaching because these systems tend to support a disproportionate amount of the biodiversity and ecological services in the landscapes within which they exist (Capon et al., 2013). A number of reviews are available that detail threats to riparian and...