Treesearch

As our world becomes increasingly urbanized, cities are often where we come into contact with the natural world—not just in parks and urban nature preserves, but in more familiar places like residential yards. We conducted bird surveys and social surveys in Chicago-area residential landscapes near forest preserves (primarily in middle- and high-income areas) to examine residents' perceptions of the birds that co-inhabit their neighborhoods and the relationship of those perceptions with characteristics of the bird community. We found that residents value many aspects of neighborhood...

On February 4, 2014, a seven-member expert panel provided objective technical information on the potential effectiveness and feasibility of activities to manage raptors (northern harriers and great horned owls) to aid the recovery of western snowy plovers. The panel discussed and scored the 26 raptor control techniques in nine main categories of habitat modification, exclusions, hazing, live capture and relocation, nest or egg depredation, lethal hunting and removal, conditioned taste aversion, avicides, and combinations of techniques. The panel also identified areas of information that...

Community-based forest management such as Community Forests Enterprises (CFEs), has potential to generate positive socio-environmental and economic outcomes. We performed a detailed survey of financial and production parameters for 30 of the approximately 992 CFEs in Mexico in order to estimate costs, income, profits and sustainability, but only two of these had harvest far above annual growth, and five of those were only a fraction more than annual growth.All of the 30 CFEs harvested more timber than they grew in 2011. suggesting issues with sustainability, but only two of these had...

Vacant and abandoned buildings pose significant challenges to the health and safety of communities. In 2011 the City of Philadelphia began enforcing a Doors and Windows Ordinance that required property owners of abandoned buildings to install working doors and windows in all structural openings or face significant fines. We tested the effects of the new ordinance on the occurrence of crime surrounding abandoned buildings from January 2011 to April 2013 using a difference-in-differences approach. We used Poisson regression models to compare differences in pre- and post-treatment measures of...

This publication provides an overview of forest resources in New Hampshire based on inventories conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the Northern Research Station. For annual inventory years 2002-2013, the sample length was equal to 5 years. Beginning in 2014, the cycle length was changed to 7 years. For the 2014 inventory, estimates for current variables such as area, volume, and biomass are based on 1,090 plot samples collected from 2009-2014. Change variables, such as net growth, removals, and mortality, are based on 892 samples collected...

Herbicides are primarily used for protecting agricultural crops from weeds and controlling vegetation competition in newly planted forest stands. Yet for over 40 years, they have also proven useful in controlling invasive plant species in natural areas. Nonnative invasive plant species, if not controlled, can displace native species and disrupt an ecosystem by changing soil chemical and biological properties. However, before an herbicide may be applied in a U.S. national forest, toxicological and ecological assessments and field testing are required to ensure it won’t negatively affect the...

The ability of landscapes to impede species’ movement or gene flow may be quantified by resistance models. Few studies have assessed the performance of resistance models parameterized by expert opinion. In addition, resistance models differ in terms of spatial and thematic resolution as well as their focus on the ecology of a particular species or more generally on the degree of human modification of the landscape (i.e. landscape integrity). The effect of these design decisions on model accuracy is poorly understood.

The impacts of climate extremes on terrestrial ecosystems are poorly understood but important for predicting carbon cycle feedbacks to climate change. Coupled climate-carbon cycle models typically assume that vegetation recovery from extreme drought is immediate and complete, which conflicts with the understanding of basic plant physiology. We examined the recovery of stem growth in trees after severe drought at 1338 forest sites across the globe, comprising 49,339 site-years, and compared the results with simulated recovery in climate-vegetation models.We found pervasive and substantial...

The new micro-dolichopodid genus Haromyia gen. nov. and the type species H. iviei sp. nov. are described from the island of Dominica in the Lesser Antilles. Males and females of Haromyia are distinguished by the large setae on a bulging clypeus, minute size, and wing veins that are nearly straight and evenly diverging from wing base. Haromyia does not fit readily into any contemporary dolichopodid subfamily, although it superficially resembles the Enliniinae and Achalcinae. Haromyia should be regarded as incertae sedis until the dolichopodid subfamilies can be refined, particularly to...

The purpose of this application, under Article 81.1 of the Code, is to conserve the genus-group names Liancalus Loew, 1857 and Scellus Loew, 1857 (Diptera, DOLICHOPODIDAE), widely distributed and well-established genera of dolichopodid flies whose names have been used consistently for more than one-and-ahalf centuries. They are threatened by a change in the type species of Anoplomerus Rondani, 1856, made in a largely-overlooked unpaginated corrigendum on the last page of Rondani (1856). Liancalus Loew, 1857 is a replacement name for the homonym Anoplomerus and automatically takes its type...