Treesearch

In Elliot and Flanagan (2023), the interrill and rill soil erodibility of 36 cropland soils was reported, along with correlations among soil erodibility and other soil properties, and equations to estimate erodibility from readily measured soil properties. Early versions of the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model had linked interrill detachment rate to the square of the rainfall intensity and an interrill soil erodibility constant Ki1. By the time the WEPP model was released for general use in 1995, the developers had changed the interrill detachment rate to be a function of the...

A study was carried out to compare runoff and erosion from natural rainfall on plots that had been treated with prescribed fire to unburned plots on a sagebrush-steppe rangeland in Southeast Idaho, U.S. Prescribed fire on rangeland sites is intended to maintain healthy shrub-steppe ecosystems but sometimes results in undesirable consequences such as increased runoff and soil erosion. Information is lacking on plot-scale erosion studies from natural precipitation in this ecosystem. Such plot-scale studies are needed to better understand sediment sources (uplands or channels) to support the...

The emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, is an invasive forest pest that is causing a rapid decline in ash (Fraxinus spp.). As EABs spread across North America to 35 U.S. states and 5 Canadian provinces, detection of the pest has proven difficult, especially at low population density sites. Panel traps have been commonly used in detection and monitoring of EAB populations. Over two sampling periods from 2016 through 2019, adult catches and detection rates were compared among four combinations of panel trap color, lure, and crown placement in southern Arkansas, northern...

City leaders are setting ambitious plans to achieve critical urban sustainability goals such as reducing urban heat, mitigating flooding during storms, and conserving biodiversity, and increasingly rely on urban forests as a key nature-based solution to such challenges. Current paradigms of urban forest management typically prioritize goals like increasing tree canopy cover that are often viewed as proxies for increased ecosystem service provision, in a general sense. However, urban foresters, the professionals with responsibility to manage urban forests, are increasingly faced with the...

Mountain meadows are ecologically important groundwater dependent ecosystems that retain and store water in upland forested landscapes. They tend to occur in low gradient, broad valleys where water slows and sediment accumulates, making them efficient locations for restoration. Over a century and a half of land use has degraded many meadows in the Sierra Nevada, reducing their hydrological and ecological functionality. Process-based restoration (PBR) is an ecosystem rehabilitation approach that utilises biogeomorphic processes to facilitate functional ecosystem recovery. Low-tech applicatio...

This paper provides a comprehensive and comparative analysis of extreme precipitation patterns from 1971 to 2015 in Nepal, a data scarce, but “hot spot” region in global climate change. We compare in‐situ observations and gridded precipitation data from the Asian Precipitation Highly Resolved Observational Data Integration Toward Evaluation of Water Resources (APHRODITE). Using 11 precipitation indices, we show that high‐intensity (RX1day, R95pTOT, R99pTOT) and frequency‐related indices (R10 mm, R20 mm) have decreased but annual maximum consecutive dry and wet days have increased. Observati...

Bottomland hardwood wetland forests along the Atlantic Coast of the United States have been changing over time; this change has been exceptionally apparent in the last two decades. Tree mortality is one of the most visually striking changes occurring in these coastal forests today. Using 2009-2019 tree mortality data from a bottomland hardwood forest monitored for long-term flux studies in North Carolina, we evaluated species composition and tree mortality trends and partitioned variance among hydrologic (e.g., sea level rise (SLR), groundwater table depth), biological (leaf area index...

John C. Frémont became “almost obsessed” with piñon pine during his wintertime traverse of the Sierra Nevada in January of 1844. Purchasing a skin bag with a few pounds of pine nuts from local Indians, he found that “when roasted, their pleasant flavor made them an agreeable addition to our now scanty store of provisions." Although the existence of junipers was well known at the time, Frémont soon would bring piñon pine to the attention of the scientific community, formally recording the name Pinus monophylla in his journal.

Global change is altering forest carbon and water balances; however, the extent to which tree species shape ecosystem-scale responses to climate, particularly in biodiverse forests, remains unclear. To address this, we simulated the effects of an envelope of future climate conditions on watershed carbon and water balances and quantified the contributions of tree species based on their xylem anatomy. We accomplished this by incorporating species-level transpiration calculations into a landscape-scale ecosystem process model. Our revised model linked the effects of forest succession, species...

This is the executive summary for the report, Climate Change Vulnerability and Adaptation in Coastal Oregon, by Halofsky et al. (2024, PNW-GTR-1024). The vulnerability assessment was developed by a science-management partnership consisting of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (Siuslaw National Forest, Oregon Dunes National Recreation Area, Cascade Head Experimental Forest, Pacific Northwest Region, Pacific Northwest Research Station) and Northwest Climate Hub; U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Land Management (Northwest Oregon District and Coos Bay District); and...