Treesearch

Asphalt pavements are an underexplored platform for carbon management because their production and maintenance are energy intensive over long service lives. Here, we redefine biomass-derived asphalt systems not simply as sustainable additives but as carbon-storage material platforms that enable partial substitution of fossil-derived binders while keeping biogenic carbon in durable infrastructure. We propose a molecular-level framework linking biomass-derived carbon structures with asphalt colloidal fractions, emphasizing how aromaticity, polarity, and functional groups regulate compatibilit...

Human settlements are increasingly being impacted by urban fires initiated by wildfires. Metrics such as area burned and number of structures destroyed are important, but research often overlooks the socio-ecological complexity of urban fires. We study the impacts of the 2025 Los Angeles fires on two communities at the neighborhood and residential parcel scales. Geospatial analyses and econometric modeling explore the relationships between urban morphology, socio-demographic factors, and home destruction. Here we show that socio-ecological characteristics and scale are key in parsing the...

Outdoor programs for veterans (OPVs) support the physical and mental health benefits of nature-based experiences, seeking to mitigate the constraints to participation that veterans commonly face. But OPVs themselves often face organizational constraints to service delivery. The COMPACT Act of 2020 required the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to establish an interagency task force to coordinate with public land agencies to enhance outdoor opportunities for veterans. A federal information request in 2022 asked veteran organizations and the public to identify constraints they...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides this resource update yearly as an overview of forest resources in California. These estimates are derived from field data collected across a systematic network of fixed-radius forest monitoring plots located on both public and private land. New updates are provided annually as a subset of plots within the State are remeasured. Each year, field crews visit and measure a subset of all FIA plots across the entire State (the size of the subset varies by State and year). Combining all...

Windbreaks are an agroforestry practice that have been used extensively in the United States for centuries. Researchers have investigated why producers use windbreaks through regional surveys; however, no national analysis has been conducted on windbreak extent or adoption, limiting understanding of key information needed to guide technical assistance and research. To address this knowledge gap, the National Agroforestry Producer Survey was conducted. The survey was completed by 5682 producers with agroforestry (52% response rate). This study provides results from the 2734 producers who...

Understanding the functional roles of species is invaluable to conservation planning and effective ecosystem management. We used stable isotope analyses to examine the functional role of two primary burrowing crayfishes from the Piedmont region of South Carolina, USA, across both roadside and field habitats. Distocambarus youngineri served as a secondary consumer in roadside and field habitats, with similar trophic positions between habitats, sex, and size. Distocambarus youngineri relied heavily on primary and secondary consumers, with invertebrates contributing up to 82% of their somatic...

For decades, body size has been regarded as one of the most important biological traits, influencing many aspects of an organism’s biology. This “master trait” correlates with features across the biological spectrum, including physiological traits such as metabolic rate, organismal traits like longevity or fecundity, and population-level characteristics including range size and extinction risk. Body size can vary with phylogeny, environmental gradients, and time.

Data collected from almost 200 plots in Madison, Wisconsin from 2015 through 2021, reveal that the city has an estimated 2.9 million live trees at least 1.0-inch in diameter across all ownerships. The most common tree species by number are common buckthorn, boxelder, and white ash, while those at least 5.0 inches or greater are boxelder, honeylocust, and northern white cedar. The largest number of trees (49.7 percent; 1.4 million trees) are found on forest land. Trees on public lands total 1.7 million and account for almost 58 percent of all live trees. Trees at least 15.0 inches in...

Instrumented indentation is a common technique for measuring the elastic properties of thin materials, including elastomers, gels, and biological materials. Traditional indentation analysis yields a reduced modulus, which is a function of Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio, thus requiring one of the parameters to be estimated or independently measured to decouple the properties. It is difficult in some cases to know the true deformation of the surface due to substrate deformations, machine compliance, and thermal drift. To address these issues, a new technique is demonstrated in which 3D...

Spongy moth or Lymantria dispar (L.) (Lepidoptera: Erebidae), formerly known as gypsy moth, is a nonnative invasive defoliator pest to the United States. Introduced accidentally to the United States in the 1860s by an amateur entomologist, spongy moth spread quickly and large-scale efforts began soon thereafter to eradicate and limit its population and distribution. The National Slow the Spread (STS) Program, piloted in 1992 and fully implemented in 2000, currently operates in 11 States and monitors a buffer zone that stretches about 100 kilometers from North Carolina to Minnesota. Current...