Treesearch

The national Forest Health Monitoring ( FHM) Program of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, has provided a means to address important forest tree disease conditions that continue to threaten the survival and prevalence of valuable tree species. A range of Evaluation Monitoring (EM) projects has been conducted related to native and introduced diseases in the Eastern United States. The topics include various forest declines such as hickory, basswood, oak, northern white cedar, ash, and black ash; forest health conditions in the Allegheny and Ozark forests; Eastern dwarf...

Forest diseases along the West Coast can be devastating, especially new introductions that are escalating with increased world trade of forest, ornamental, and agricultural products, as well as increased passenger travel and cargo shipments wrapped in wood-packing material. Recently introduced nonnative diseases such as sudden oak death have seriously affected the ornamental nursery industry in California, Oregon, and Washington as well as native coastal evergreen and redwood/tanoak (Sequoia sempervirens/Lithocarpus densiflorus) forests in California. Although relatively small in acreage...

The national Forest Health Monitoring ( FHM) Program of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, funded six Evaluation Monitoring (EM) projects on invasive plants. The projects belong to one of two broad groups: the effects of management actions on the distribution of invasive plants, and investigating the use of remote sensing or existing data from the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program of the Forest Service or from local inventory as a means of gathering distribution or inventory information on invasive plant species.

The status of epiphytic ( i.e., tree-dwelling) lichen communities is systematically tracked by the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) and national Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) programs of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture ( http:// fia.fs.fed.us/lichen/default.asp). Lichens are highly sensitive to climatic and chemical perturbations, and can be used for early detection of changes in climate and air quality (Jovan 2008). This forewarning gives land and air managers the opportunity to attempt mitigation before less sensitive organisms and ecosystem processes are affected....

The crown-condition indicator was originally developed in 1990 to monitor tree crown health. The indicator presently consists of seven “absolute” variables recorded in the field (sapling vigor class, uncompacted live crown ratio, crown light exposure, crown position, crown density, foliage transparency, and crown dieback), and four “composite” variables formulated from multiple crown dimensions (crown volume, crown surface area, crown shape, and crown efficiency). Detailed descriptions of the crown-condition indicator are available in Schomaker and others (2007) and on the Web at http://srs...

This chapter provides a synthesis and brief review of 11 Base Evaluation Monitoring (EM) projects and 7 Fire Plan projects in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming. Base projects were distributed among the primary coniferous forest types in this region: spruce-fir, piñon-juniper, Douglas-fir, lodgepole pine, limber pine, and ponderosa pine. All but two of the Base projects were associated with bark beetle-caused tree mortality, the exceptions being a study examining the effects of a defoliating insect, Nepytia janetae, and a study assessing the occurrence, severity, and...

This chapter describes three projects. One project addressed the impacts on American basswood (Tilia americana) from an exotic species, the introduced basswood thrips (Thrips calcaratus). As with many exotic species, little was known about the biology and behavior of this insect, and little was known concerning the possible negative impacts on the basswood resource in the North Central region. The project clarified the importance of Thrips calcaratus in a regional basswood decline episode. It also provided a great deal of basic biological information on the insect. The second project...

The hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae) ( HWA) is a serious nonnative pest of eastern (Tsuga canadensis) and Carolina hemlocks (T. caroliniana). The insect is currently found in 17 eastern States from southern Maine to northeastern Georgia and west to eastern Kentucky and Tennessee. On average, HWA spreads about 12.5 km per year, HWA dispersing naturally by wind and birds, and artificially on hemlock nursery stock. Infested nursery stock has resulted in isolated infestations in Michigan, Ohio, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. Such isolated infestations are eradicated when possible....

Between 1998 and 2008, five Evaluation Monitoring ( EM) projects under the national Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, studied insects of the Southern United States. The projects reflected expanded survey efforts related to various nonnative bark and ambrosia beetles. Two of the projects conducted preliminary surveys of the Southeast to determine the occurrence of exotic ambrosia beetles, and two projects addressed mortality surveys and survey methodology for the nonnative redbay ambrosia beetle and associated laurel wilt fungus....

Fine scale spatial mapping of historical tree records over large extents is important for determining historical species distributions. We compared performance of two ensemble methods based on classification trees, random forests, and boosted classification, for mapping continuous historical distributions of tree species. We used a combination of soil and terrain predictor variables to predict species distributions for 21 tree species, or species groups, from historical tree surveys in the Missouri Ozarks. Mean true positive rates and AUC values of all species combined for random forests...