Treesearch

The uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by terrestrial ecosystems is critical for moderating climate change. To provide a ground-based long-term assessment of the contribution of forests to terrestrial CO2 uptake, we synthesized in situ forest data from boreal, temperate and tropical biomes spanning three decades. We found that the carbon sink in global forests was steady, at 3.6 ± 0.4 Pg C yr−1 in the 1990s and 2000s, and 3.5 ± 0.4 Pg C yr−1 in the 2010s. Despite this global stability, our analysis revealed some major biome-level changes. Carbon sinks have increased in temperate (+30 ± 5%) and...

Every 10 years the Forest Service presents an assessment of the nation’s forests and rangelands. The 2020 Resources Planning Act Assessment (RPA Assessment) looks at historical data trends and projects the availability and condition of renewable resources across the nation’s forests and rangelands 50 years into the future. Mandated by the 1974 Forest and Rangeland Renewable Resources Planning Act, it is the sixth report in almost 50 years. Scientists from USDA Forest Service research stations, including the Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS), and numerous collaborators have been hard...

Past reviews of the USDA Forest Service (Forest Service) Research and Development (R&D) branch have identified several persistent challenges, including unclear strategic direction and a need for greater communication with end users. We conducted research focused on the Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) of R&D to understand current perceptions about the station’s efficacy and strategic direction as well as its engagement with partners both inside and outside of Forest Service. We conducted fifty-eight interviews with Forest Service and RMRS leaders, scientists, and partners. Interviewee...

Given the importance of climate in shaping species’ geographic distributions, climate change poses an existential threat to biodiversity. Climate envelope modeling, the predominant approach used to quantify this threat, presumes that individuals in populations respond to climate variability and change according to species-level responses inferred from spatial occurrence data - such that individuals at the cool edge of a species’ distribution should benefit from warming (the “leading edge”), whereas individuals at the warm edge should suffer (the “trailing edge”). Using 1,558 tree-ring time...

This article presents and describes a dataset for the bills of materials for the buildings constructed with mass timber (MT), structural steel (SS), and reinforced concrete (RC), which are generated using Athena’s Impact Estimator for Buildings (IE4B) software to conduct a whole building life-cycle assessment (WBLCA). These data are associated with the research article Environmental Impact Assessment of Mass Timber, Structural Steel, and Reinforced Concrete Buildings Based on the 2021 International Building Code Provisions [1]. This dataset was utilized to estimate their environmental...

Biodiesel, an eco-friendly and sustainable alternative to diesel, has gained increasing interest over the past few years. The reuse of waste cooking oil as a feedstock for biodiesel production is affordable and environmentally safe. This study aimed to understand the understudied benefits of using zinc-doped biochar as a catalyst for biodiesel production. The zinc-doped biochar catalyst was characterized using techniques such as scanning electron microscope with energy-dispersive X-ray (SEM-EDAX) analysis and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) analysis, which revealed the morphological and...

Interactions among wood-decay fungi can have a profound effect on fungal community composition, decay rates and ultimately the chemical composition of the material remaining after the decay process. Interspecific interactions among fungi as they decay wood have been well-studied but almost nothing is known about the effect of intraspecific interactions between individual genets on the decay process. In this study we examine the effect of both intra- and interspecific competition on wood mass-loss for five species of wood-decay fungi: Cerrena unicolor, Fuscoporia gilva, Irpex lacteus,...

Future water availability is influenced by both climate and associated vegetation dynamics. This study coupled vegetation projections from a dynamic global vegetation model (MC2) with an ecohydrological model, Water Supply Stress Index (WaSSI), to predict water yield at the 8-digit Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC8) watershed level for the conterminous United States (CONUS) for the 21st century. We considered two contrasting warming scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways 8.5 and 4.5) and accounted for simulation uncertainty by using a large ensemble of climate model outputs. The coupled...

Although climate change is expected to drive tree species toward colder and wetter regions of their distribution, broadscale empirical evidence is lacking. One possibility is that past and present human activities in forests obscure or alter the effects of climate. Here, using data from more than two million monitored trees from 73 widely distributed species, we quantify changes in tree species density within their climatic niches across Northern Hemisphere forests. We observe a reduction in mean density across species, coupled with a tendency toward increasing tree size. However, the...

Purpose of Review Forests play an essential role in conserving pollinating insects and supporting pollination services in mixed-use landscapes and are particularly important to species that require resources restricted to forests. However, some forests provide higher quality habitat for these organisms than others. The primary objectives of this article are to 1) review how pollinator communities are influenced by changes in forest structure, composition, and age, 2) explore how these patterns differ between conifer and broadleaf forests, and 3) provide recommendations for managers...