Treesearch

What are natural landscapes? Are they “out there,” separate from people, or are they creations of our own perception? An exploration of artistic visions of landscape on the one hand and the development of ecology as a self-conscious science on the other suggests that for nearly 150 years ecology has been conditioned by romantic, picturesque portrayals of landscape. Landscape (as landscab) originally implied people living within and shaping a capricious nature, but rapidly evolved to landtskip: natural scenery reflecting a balance of nature viewed from the outside. Despite repeated scientifi...

In the last decade, outbreaks of bark beetles in coniferous forests of North America have caused unprecedented tree mortality and economic losses (Nowak et al., 2008; van Mantgem et al., 2009; Waring et al., 2009), converting forests that were previously atmospheric carbon sinks into carbon sources (Kurz et al., 2008). Native species of bark beetle rapidly kill healthy trees by aggregating on their hosts, boring into the stem, and vectoring pathogenic fungi that are tolerant of conifer defenses (Paine et al., 1997; Wang et al., 2013). Climate change is thought to have exacerbatedtree...

Root rot (caused by Phytophthora cinnamomi) and chestnut blight (caused by Cryphonectria parasitica) are the two most destructive diseases affecting American chestnut, Castanea dentata. Therefore, breeding for resistance to both pathogens simultaneously is essential before the American chestnut can be restored to its full native range. Using combined genetic and genomic approaches, resistance to C. parasitica (Cp) has been mapped to three quantitative trait loci (QTLs) in chestnut. In addition, a marker set covering the chestnut genome has been generated for implementation in breeding for...

Pocket gophers (Geomyidae) are major agents of disturbance in North American grasslands. Gopher mounds bury existing plants and influence community structure through various mechanisms. However, in mountain meadows that experience winter snowpack, gophers also create winter castings, smaller tube-shaped deposits, previously ignored in studies of plant–gopher disturbance relationships. We studied the influences of the Mazama pocket gopher (Thomomys mazama Merriam, 1897) in montane meadows of the Oregon Cascades, quantifying community patterns at larger spatial scales than previously studied...

Although the word commitment is prevalent in conservation biology literature and despite the importance of people’s commitment to the success of conservation initiatives, commitment as a psychological phenomenon and its operation in specific conservation behaviors remains unexplored. Despite increasing calls for conservation psychology to play a greater role in meeting conservation goals, applications of the psychological sciences to specific conservation behaviors, illustrating their utility to conservation practice, are rare. We examined conservation volunteers’ motivations and commitment...

The Forest Health Initiative (FHI) was developed and implemented to test the hypothesis that a coordinated effort in biotechnology research could lead to resistant trees capable of restoring a species in a relevant time frame. As a test case, the American chestnut (Castanea dentata) was chosen for study as it is an iconic forest tree species in the eastern United States and southeastern Canada that has been nearly extirpated by chestnut blight which is caused by an introduced fungal pathogen (Cryphonectria parasitica). In addition, the species has attracted research investments over many...

Multi-instance multi-label learning (MIML) is a framework for supervised classification where the objects to be classified are bags of instances associated with multiple labels. For example, an image can be represented as a bag of segments and associated with a list of objects it contains. Prior work on MIML has focused on predicting label sets for previously unseen bags. We instead consider the problem of predicting instance labels while learning from data labeled only at the bag level. We propose a regularized rank-loss objective designed for instance annotation, which can be instantiated...

Flow and temperature are strongly linked environmental factors driving ecosystem processes in streams. Stream temperature maxima (Tmax_w) and stream flow minima (Qmin) can create periods of stress for aquatic organisms. In mountainous areas, such as western North America, recent shifts toward an earlier spring peak flow and decreases in low flow during summer/fall have been reported. We hypothesized that an earlier peak flow could be shifting the timing of low flow and leading to a decrease in the interval between Tmax_w and Qmin. We also examined if years with extreme low Qmin were...

This chapter provides supplementary guidance for estimating and reporting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals from managed lands with Inland Wetland Mineral Soils (IWMS) for all land-use categories (see Chapter 1 and decision tree in Chapter 1 in this supplement for what is specifically covered in this chapter in relationship to other chapters in this supplement). Information on Tier 1 default methods for Wetland Mineral Soil (WMS) is found in Table 2.3, Chapter 2, Volume 4 of the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories (2006 IPCC Guidelines). This chapter...

Streams are natural features in urban landscapes that can provide ecosystem services for urban residents. However, urban streams are under increasing pressure caused by multiple anthropogenic impacts, including increases in human population and associated impervious surface area, and accelerated climate change. The ability to anticipate these changes and better understand their effects on streams is important for developing and implementing strategies to mitigate potentially negative effects. In this study, stream flow was monitored during April-November (2011 and 2012), and the data were...