Treesearch

A species’ daily and seasonal activity patterns are fundamental components of its ecological niche, shaping how it interacts with the surrounding community. Many species modify their activity patterns when near humans, with varying consequences. New technologies that identify the location of wildlife and humans, in combination with their behaviors, can offer insight into whether impacts of human–wildlife interactions are positive, negative, or neutral. We studied activity patterns of southern Sierra Nevada fishers ( Pekania pennanti (Erxleben, 1777)) in the presence of humans in Yosemite...

Large magnitude snow avalanches (destructive size ≥ D3) impact settlements, transportation corridors, and public safety worldwide. In Colorado, United States, avalanches have killed more people than any other natural hazard since 1950. In March 2019, a large magnitude avalanche cycle occurred throughout the entire mountainous portion of Colorado resulting in more than 1000 reported avalanches during a two-week period. Nearly 200 of these avalanches were size D4 or larger with at least three D5 avalanches. However, placing this 2019 large magnitude avalanche cycle in historic context...

Community forests (CFs) are a forest ownership and governance approach that enable community members and other key stakeholders to cooperatively manage local forests to produce a range of benefits that align with local community priorities. While well-studied internationally, there is a lack of research that systematically documents how CFs can contribute to rural prosperity in the U.S. amidst ongoing socioeconomic and environmental change. We adapt a framework developed to characterize the contributions of forests to rural prosperity in the international context to investigate the...

Mass timber construction often has low tolerances due to offsite manufacturing and fabrication. However, due to dimensional tolerances of the natural material as well as the shrinking and expansion due to moisture changes, gaps typically form between members. These gaps can be up to 6 mm and current standards and codes require fire caulking of the gaps regardless of their sizes. In addition, prescriptive char models indicate that significant charring can occur within these gaps thereby reducing the load-carrying capacity of the structural components and providing a potential pathway for...

Drought is a natural part of the Southeastern United States climate and a threat to agricultural productivity and profitability. Whether slow developing or rapid onset, droughts can have negative effects on agricultural crops and livestock, depending on timing, severity, and length. Droughts are expected to become increasingly common in the Southeast due to increasing temperatures, longer dry periods between rain events, and growing water demand across the region. To help producers remain resilient and productive in the face of this threat, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)...

Nature-based solutions (NBS) are increasingly promoted in agricultural and forestry policy, yet their effectiveness depends on technical assistance providers (TAPs) who translate policy guidelines into land management decisions. Drawing on Diffusion of Innovations and Value–Belief–Norm frameworks, this study examines how TAPs’ professional backgrounds, organizational affiliations, regional contexts, and management experiences shape their knowledge, perceived importance, and promotion of NBS. A web-based survey of 101 TAPs in North Carolina was analyzed using Spearman correlations and...

In 2020, six wildfires burned more than 1 million acres over the Labor Day weekend in Oregon. Jeremy Fried, a research forester with the U.S. Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station, saw an opportunity to study how these wind-driven megafires affected forest structure and carbon storage, and how forest structure before the fires may have influenced fire severity.With research fellows Sebastian Busby and Angela Klock, Fried developed a model that estimated wind speed when wildfire entered forest plots previously inventoried through the national Forest Inventory and Analysis...

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 coastal Alaska. 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...

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 Georgia. 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...

Seed banking supports conservation, but freshly collected and stored seed may differ in important characteristics. Our resurrection study assessed differences in seedling traits from stored and fresh populations of six native plant species in the Great Basin, where invasive annual grasses increase fire frequency to the detriment of native plants. We evaluated stored seed collected through the Seeds of Success programme and contemporary re-collections from the same population 3–11 years later, including sites that burned between collection dates and paired, unburned sites. We sowed seeds in...