Treesearch

Mountain watersheds are primary sources of freshwater, carbon sequestration, and other ecosystem services. There is significant interest in the effects of climate change and variability on these processes over short to long time scales. Much of the impact of hydroclimate variability in forest ecosystems is manifested in vegetation dynamics in space and time. In steep terrain, leaf phenology responds to topoclimate in complex ways, and can produce specific and measurable shifts in landscape forest patterns. The onset of spring is usually delayed at a specific rate with increasing elevation...

Landscape and Urban Planning encourages multiple perspectives and approaches to help understand landscapes as social-ecological systems, with the goal that by building a robust science of landscape we can provide sustainable solutions for guiding its change. But the link between science and practice, or more simply put, between knowledge and action, is not always clear or easy to accomplish, and while multiple perspectives may help build a robust science, they may not always converge on a shared solution.

Recent research shows that survivor trees in rural, managed forests rebuild broken crowns with new branches and foliage after ice storm injury (Shortle et al. 2014). Veteran trees in historic parks and landscapes show repeated cycles of crown loss and recovery (Fay 2002). Crown rebuilding or reiteration from sprouts is a physiological response with architectural effects that occur after crown injury or as part of tree aging, or senescence (Meier et al 2012). That a tree would form new shoots and branches to replace lost foliage and photosynthetic capacity makes sense (Shigo 1989). However,...

The second glued-laminated structure built in the United States was constructed at the USDA Forest Products Laboratory (FPL) in 1934 to demonstrate the performance of wooden arch buildings. After 75 years of use the structure was decommissioned in 2010. Shortly after construction, researchers structurally evaluated the glued-laminated arch structure for uniform loading on the center arch. This structural system evaluation was added to the existing laboratory work on glued-laminated arches to develop the foundation on which the current glued-laminated arch design criteria is based. After 75...

An understanding of the ways in which levels of invasions by alien species are correlated with environmental factors is helpful to manage the negative impacts of these invasive species. Two tropical coastal areas in South China, Shenzhen Bay and Leizhou Bay, are national nature reserves, but they are threatened by invasive plants. Here, we investigated the level of invasion by exotic plants at both bays, and its relationship with selected environmental factors. We found a total of 34 invasive plant species, 18 of which were present at both bays; among these, 15 species were in terrestrial...

The southern Appalachian forests are home to myriad species of insects, spiders, and other arthropods. There are more than 4,000 invertebrate species know in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park , and easily a thousand insect species in the Coweeta basin alone. The forest environment, with its favorable microclimates and structural diversity, offers a large variety of niches, different host-plant species, and soil and litter habitats. Of this vast assemblage of arthropod species, most are predators that keep prey populations at low abundances, and only a few insects ever reach population...

Watershed (WS) 7 at Coweeta was logged in 1977. The stream draining this watershed, Big Hurricane Branch, was affected in many ways. While the stream has recovered in some characteristics, the continuing press disturbance limits many aspects of recovery. In this chapter, we report the long-term pattern of recovery of the organic matter dynamics of this stream.

Why study response of stream invertebrates to watershed disturbances such as clearcut logging? Stream invertebrates can be excellent integrators of changes in such ecosystem phenomena as changes in the food base of ecosystems. For example, a number of invertebrate taxa appear to track changes in food resources. Many taxa also exhibit substrate-specific as well as taxon-specific responses to physical alterations, such as sediment addition. Benthic invertebrates can also play important roles in many ecological processes, and in whole ecosystems, benthic invertebrates often display early and...

The Fernow Experimental Forest (FEF) was established to conduct research in forest and watershed management in the central Appalachians. The 1868-ha FEF, located south of Parsons, West Virginia, is administered by the Northern Research Station of the USDA Forest Service and provides a valuable point of comparison with the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory (CHL), located in the southern Appalachians. This chapter summarizes responses to clearcutting on four watersheds at FEF and compares the results to those from clearcutting on CHL Watershed & (WS 7).

The Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (HBEF) is located in central New Hampshire, in the heart of the White Mountains, toward the northern end of the Appalachian chain. HBEF was established in 1955, two decades after Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory (CHL), but research objectives at both sites have long been similar, that is, to understand hydrologic and nutrient cycling processes for forest ecosystems and to determine responses to natural and human disturbances. This chapter summarizes the responses to intensive cuttings on three watersheds at HBEF and compares the results with those from...