Treesearch

Lianas, woody vines acting as structural parasites of trees, have profound effects on the composition and structure of tropical forests, impacting tree growth, mortality, and forest succession. Remote sensing could offer a powerful tool for quantifying the scale of liana infestation, provided the availability of robust detection methods. We analyze the consistency and global geographic specificity of spectral signals—reflectance across wavelengths—from liana-infested tree crowns and forest stands, examining the underlying mechanisms of these signals. We compiled a uniquely comprehensive...

Climate change is creating an urgent need to implement adaptation strategies in forest ecosystems. Assisted migration (AM) of species or genotypes adapted to future climate is one promising strategy, but operational implementation is challenging and likely varies across ownerships. We conducted an online survey (n = 174) of federal, state, Tribal and private industrial forest managers in Washington, Oregon, and California to understand individual and organizational practices around climate adaptation, perceived barriers to AM, and differences between private industry and public agencies....

Forest conversion to development threatens the ability of watersheds to provide stable and clean water supplies. Water managers are targeting forest conservation as a source water protection strategy to maintain healthy watershed function in developing areas, especially upstream of drinking water treatment facilities. Understanding the role of current forest cover in safeguarding these facilities is therefore crucial. We used the Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) to examine the relationship between upstream forest cover and downstream water resources under both current (2020) conditions...

Oak-dominated forests worldwide support high levels of biodiversity and provide many important ecosystem services. However, oak forest sustainability is challenged by unsuccessful recruitment of oaks into the overstory. It is debated whether relatively shade-intolerant oaks can maintain dominance under continuous cover forestry and examples of successful recruitment of oak into the overstory in mixed, uneven-aged forests are rare. This study, set in southern Sweden, investigated the effects of selective cutting on stand structure and oak recruits and how stand density, canopy openness, and...

Climate change may transform peatlands from net carbon (C) sinks to C sources, which could result in a positive feedback to global warming. Warmer temperatures might lower water tables, increase the abundance of shrubs, slow Sphagnum and sedge growth and further accelerate the decomposition of dissolved organic matter (DOM) with a concomitant release of C from the surface. Studies in which vascular plant functional groups (PFGs) in peatlands have been manipulated to mimic the potential effects of a warming climate on DOM are scarce. In the subject study, seasonal effects of PFGs on the...

Hybridization between eastern and western lineages of the biological control agent, Leucotaraxis argenticollis (Zetterstedt) (Diptera: Chamaemyiidae), was demonstrated in the laboratory. The western lineage is abundant on hemlock woolly adelgid, Adelges tsugae Annand (Hemiptera: Adelgidae) in western North America while a genetically distinct eastern lineage feeds mostly on pine adelgids (Hemiptera: Adelgidae: Pineus spp.). Western flies have been released in eastern North America but establishment has not been observed. When reared on A. tsugae in the laboratory, many eastern L. argenticol...

Civic capacity to care for the urban environment is a key factor in urban sustainability efforts. Civic environmental stewardship groups play critical roles in solving governance challenges associated with sustainability, serving as brokers, acting as stewards, advocating for policies, and being repositories of social-ecological memory. Understanding the existing capacity of such groups to create social-ecological outcomes across the urban landscape enables better planning and implementation of equitable nature-based solutions. In this paper, we draw upon existing frameworks of community...

Using Planetscope imagery, we trained a random forest model to detect Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana) throughout a diverse urban landscape in Columbia, Missouri. The random forest model had a classification accuracy of 89.78%, a recall score of 0.693, and an F1 score of 0.819. The key hyperparameters for model tuning were the cutoff and class–weight parameters. After the distribution of Callery pear was predicted throughout the landscape, we analyzed the distribution pattern of the predictions using Ripley’s K and then associated the distribution patterns with various socio-economic...

We conducted a census of all facilities in California that purchase roundwood as well as facilities that purchase residuals from roundwood users. We also collected data from facilities in surrounding states that purchase roundwood from California. We asked facilities about their mill characteristics, employment, inputs, outputs, residual production and disposition, and sales values. In total, we identified 72 facilities in California, accounting for more than 1.6 billion board feet (BBF) Scribner of timber harvest, nearly 2.4 BBF Scribner of lumber and 2.1 million bone-dry units of mill...

California forest land managers seek current information about tree utilization and the volume of merchantable bole wood residue produced by commercial timber harvesting. To address this need, University of Montana, Bureau of Business and Economic Research analysts investigated timber harvest utilization at active logging sites in California from 2018 through 2022. This research characterized current tree utilization, logging operations, and woody biomass left onsite after harvest. Study results were used to compute state-level utilization factors, which indicated that in California, for...