Treesearch

In early 2020 as the world grappled with the profound disruptions wrought by the global pandemic COVID-19, Forest Service personnel managing firefighting crews found themselves in a novel situation where traditional strategies for managing wildfires clashed with the imperative to safeguard firefighters against a highly contagious virus. At the outset of this extraordinary year, and as COVID-19 began spreading through the United States that spring, some typical prefire season preparations such as trainings and new hires were being made but it was not exactly "business as usual." Concerns...

Livestock grazing is a common use of rangelands that can be managed to support rangeland health, including the wide array of ecosystem services that benefit society from public lands and private lands. This requires careful allocation of naturally occurring forage on large landscapes for both domestic and wild herbivores. Managers know grazing can sustain rangeland health as long as they time it right and balance the duration, frequency, and intensity of the grazing. However, forage production on a single area or landscape varies significantly from year to year, which, until recently, has...

In the western United States, wildfire activity has increased the exposure of communities to fires that can devastate lives and destroy homes and businesses. As fires encroach on urban areas, protecting communities from wildfire impacts is a top priority for fire managers. Scientists studying wildland fire in the wildland urban interface (WUI) are particularly interested in using historical data and analytic models to understand how to reduce risks to the WUI.

Emerald ash borer (EAB) (Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire) (Coleoptera: Buprestidae) is the most destructive insect to invade North American forests. Identifying habitat features that support EAB natural enemies is necessary to enhance EAB biological control. In many forest ecosystems, tree species diversity has been linked with reduced pest abundance and increases in natural enemy abundance. We assessed the infuence of tree species richness, ash density, and proportion of total ash basal area on ash canopy condition, EAB larval densities, and biocontrol by woodpeckers and parasitoids in...

High severity fire is far outpacing post-fire reforestation capacity across the American West, highlighting the need to better understand when and where natural regeneration is sufficient to meet short- and long-term reforestation goals. The vast majority of available post-fire data represents regeneration in the first few years following a fire, raising the question of how well recovery trajectories can be predicted from early post-fire snapshots. We utilize a unique dataset from seven wildfires and 78 plots surveyed twice following stand-replacing fire in two California ecoregions, the...

Relatively unmanaged interstitial areas at the residential–wildland interface can support the development of novel woody plant communities. Community assembly processes in urban areas involve interactions between spontaneous and cultivated species pools that include native, introduced (exotic/non-native) and invasive species. The potential of these communities to spread under changing climate conditions has implications for the future trajectories of forests within and beyond urban areas. We quantified woody vegetation (including trees and shrubs) in relatively unmanaged “interstitial”...

Anthropogenic activities in disturbance-mediated ecosystems might affect certain ecological processes that, in turn, can affect thestability and resilience of those ecosystems. In upland pine forests, land-use practices such as intensive silviculture and fire suppression have contributedto the loss of diversity-rich pine savannahs throughout the southeast. Whereas the application of management strategies has been shownto alter forest structure in pine ecosystems, less is known about how these efforts influence pathways of energy flow and the consumer–resourcerelationships therein. Here, we...

Households play a critical role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. However, there have been few studies of household conservation from the perspective of the nexus of food, energy, and water (FEW) consumption. This study's objective is to understand the effects of different types of intervention messages for inducing conservation of FEW resources and reducing carbon emissions at the household level in the U.S. Employing a serious-gaming approach, we developed the HomeRUN (Home Role-play for Understanding the Nexus) game, which allows players to act as homeowners and take behavioral and...

Aim: Invasions of non-native insects can have substantial impacts on agriculture, forestry, human health and biodiversity with considerable economic and environmental consequences. To understand the causes of these invasions, it is important to quantify the relative influence of principal drivers such as international imports and climatic effects. Location: North America, Chile, Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Japan. Time Period: 1881–2020. Methods: To evaluate the relative contributions of various factors in explaining global variation in numbers of non-native insect establishments in...

Urban forests provide ecosystem services important for regulating climate, conserving biodiversity, and maintaining human well-being. However, these forests vary in composition and physiological traits due to their unique biophysical and social contexts. This variation complicates assessing the functions and services of different urban forests. To compare the characteristics of the urban forest, we sampled the species composition and two externally sourced traits (drought tolerance and water-use capacity) of tree and shrub species in residential yards, unmanaged areas, and natural reference...