Treesearch

An analysis of trees in Toronto, Ontario, reveals that this city has about 10.2 million trees with a tree and shrub canopy that covers approximately 26.6 percent of the city. The most common tree species are eastern white-cedar, sugar maple, and Norway maple. The urban forest currently stores an estimated 1.1 million metric tons of carbon valued at CAD$25.0 million. In addition, these trees remove about 46,700 metric tons of carbon per year (CAD$1.1 million per year) and about 1,905 metric tons of air pollution per year (CAD$16.9 million per year). Trees in Toronto are estimated to reduce...

An analysis of trees in the greater Kansas City region of Missouri and Kansas reveals that this area has about 249,450,000 trees with tree and shrub canopy that covers 28.3 percent of the region. The most common tree species are American elm, northern hackberry, Osage-orange, honeylocust, and eastern redcedar. Trees in the greater Kansas City region currently store about 19.9 million tons of carbon (72.8 million tons CO2) valued at $411 million. In addition, these trees remove about 1.0 million tons of carbon per year (3.7 million tons CO2 per year valued at $20.7 million per year) and...

In this edition, you will learn many interesting facts about the Southwestern United States. In “That’s a Humdinger!” you will discover what happens to hummingbird nesting following different kinds of forest-related treatments. In “By the Light of the Silvery Minnow,” you will find out whether a small minnow can learn to find natural foods. Without success, this minnow population might one day disappear. You will learn how climate change might affect 30 different animal species in the article entitled, "Wild Ways." Some of these species are already in danger of extinction. The Southwestern...

The scientists in this study were interested in what communities do after a natural disturbance or human-caused tragedy. In particular, they were curious about planting trees, flowers, and other plants as a way to remember the event or the people who were injured or lost. The scientists noticed that people surviving a human-caused tragedy or natural disturbance often planted trees, flowers, or other plants as a way to remember.

Salmon-derived nutrients come from lots of spawning salmon. The nutrients are distributed through many different ways. The scientist in this study wanted to find out how the role of these nutrients may change in a certain type of landform. Geomorphology is the study of landforms and the processes that shape these landforms.

For landscape ecology to produce knowledge relevant to society, it must include considerations of human culture and behavior, extending beyond the natural sciences to synthesize with many other disciplines. Furthermore, it needs to be able to support landscape change processes which increasingly take the shape of deliberative and collaborative decision making by local stakeholder groups. Landscape ecology as described by Wu (Landscape Ecol 28:1–11, 2013) therefore needs three additional topics of investigation: (1) the local landscape as a boundary object that builds communication among...

Long-term ecological data are crucial in helping ecologists understand ecosystem function and environmental change. Nevertheless, these kinds of data sets are difficult to analyze because they are usually large, multivariate, and spatiotemporal. Although existing analysis tools such as statistical methods and spreadsheet software permit rigorous tests of pre-conceived hypotheses and static charts for simple data exploration, they have limited capacity to provide an overview of the data and to enable ecologists to explore data iteratively, and interactively, before committing to statistical...

Characterization of groundwater quality allows the evaluation of groundwater pollution and provides information for better management of groundwater resources. This study characterized the shallow groundwater quality and its spatial and seasonal variations in the Lower St. Johns River Basin, Florida, USA, under agricultural, forest, wastewater, and residential land uses using field measurements and twodimensional kriging analysis. Comparison of the concentrations of groundwater quality constituents against the US EPA’s water quality criteria showed that the maximum nitrate/nitrite (NOx)...

In this study, the enzyme activities and their relationships to domestic wastewater purification are investigated in four different types of subsurface-flow constructed wetlands (CWs), namely the traditional horizontal subsurface-flow, horizontal baffled subsurface-flow, vertical baffled subsurface-flow, and composite baffled subsurface-flow CWs. Results showed that the urease activity in the composite baffled subsurface-flow CW was significantly higher than in the other three CWs, while the phosphatase activity in the vertical baffled subsurface-flow CW were higher than in the other three...