Treesearch

Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory, located in western North Carolina, USA, is a 2,185 ha basin wherein forest climate monitoring and watershed experimentation began in the early 1930s. An extensive climate and hydrologic network has facilitated research for over 75 years. Our objectives in this paper were to describe the monitoring network, present long-term air temperature and precipitation data, and analyze the temporal variation in the long-term temperature and precipitation record. We found that over the period of record: (1) air temperatures have been increasing significantly since the...

This document and accompanying maps describe land cover classifications and change detection for a 13.8 million ha landscape straddling the border between Minnesota, and Ontario, Canada (greater Border Lakes Region). Land cover classifications focus on discerning Anderson Level II forest and nonforest cover to track spatiotemporal changes in forest cover. Multi-temporal Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM), Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+), and Multi-Spectral Scanner (MSS) data from 1972 to 2000 were used to classify forest cover types and disturbances at 5-year intervals. A composite dataset...

Projections for the United States and Canada to 2030 have been made with a global model to account for concurrent changes in other countries. Three future scenarios were investigated: two IPCC-based scenarios assuming the rapid growth of wood-based energy, and one IPCC-based scenario without this assumption. The model, under the IPCC scenarios, accounted for trends in population, income and land use along with emerging technology and predicted changes to consumption patterns for wood products and bioenergy. Markets for wood products, which mainly are destined for the construction sector in...

The core species of the family Planistromellaceae are included in the teleomorphic genera Planistroma and Planistromella and the connected anamorphic, coelomycetous genera Alpakesa, Kellermania, and Piptarthron. These genera have been defined primarily on the basis of ascospore septation or number of conidial appendages. Due to a lack of DNA sequence data, phylogenetic placement of these genera within the Dothideomycetes, evaluation of monophyly, and questions about generic boundaries could not be adequately addressed in the past. Isolates of nearly all of the known species in these genera...

Exobasidium ferrugineae, associated with hypertrophied flowers and less commonly leaves of Lyonia ferruginea (rusty staggerbush), is formally described here as a new species. Morphological and DNA sequence (ITS, nLSU) data are provided. Phylogenetic analyses confirm that it is not conspecific with any species of Exobasidium represented by existing DNA sequence data. A key to North American species of Exobasidium on Lyonia is presented.

Society's increasing diversity poses many challenges to environmental educators. Numerous barriers and constraints to ethnic minority communities' environmental literacy and engagement in nature-based activities have been identified, including lack of outreach, discrimination or the perceived potential for discrimination, cultural differences, economic factors, and the need for cultural diversity training among environmental educators. A barrier that is seldom discussed is a lack of culturally appropriate approaches to environmental education and outreach. Environmental educators and...

Time-resolved irradiance and convective heating and cooling of fast-response thermopile sensors were measured in 13 natural and prescribed wildland fires under a variety of fuel and ambient conditions. It was shown that a sensor exposed to the fire environment was subject to rapid fluctuations of convective transfer whereas irradiance measured by a windowed sensor was much less variable in time, increasing nearly monotonically with the approach of the flame front and largely declining with its passage. Irradiance beneath two crown fires peaked at 200 and 300kWm-2, peak irradiance associated...

Time-resolved radiative and convective heating measurements were collected on a prescribed burn in coniferous fuels at a sampling frequency of 500 Hz. Evaluation of the data in the time and frequency domain indicate that this sampling rate was sufficient to capture the temporal fluctuations of radiative and convective heating. The convective heating signal contained significantly larger fluctuations in magnitude and frequency than did the radiative heating signal. The data were artificially down-sampled to 100, 50, 10, 5 and 1 Hz to explore the effect of sampling rate on peak heat fluxes,...

Some of the long-term consequences of China’s collective forests tenure reform were projected with the Global Forest Products Model (GFPM). The reform had a positive effect on the wood supply and demand balance. By 2020 the reform led to a 14 to 36 percent decrease of China’s imports of industrial roundwood. Concurrently, the rest of the world produced less, but several other countries especially in Europe, imported more. Despite the positive short-term effect of the reform on supply, China’s industrial roundwood deficit was still increasing, but at a slower rate, after the reform was...

In Canadian boreal forests, wildfire is the predominant agent of natural disturbance often with millions of hectares burning annually. In addition to fire, nearly one quarter of Canada's boreal forest is also managed for industrial wood production. Post-fire logging (or salvage harvesting) is increasingly used to minimize economic losses from fire, notwithstanding that the ecological impacts of successive disturbance events remain poorly understood. Improved monitoring and management of post-fire environments will require new information regarding the location and timing of past operations....