Treesearch

A growing body of evidence shows that nature-based therapy can help reduce stress and trauma symptoms. In recent years, the number of outdoor programs for veterans who experience post-traumatic stress has grown. These programs engage with public lands—both practically and symbolically—to create opportunities for transformative personal and professional experiences for veterans. Yet, there is little understanding about the diverse social, therapeutic, geographic, and activity dimensions of these programs on public lands, or how they are coordinated within and across agencies. To shed light...

Between 1935 and 1940, the government-sponsored Home Owners’ Loan Corporation assigned grades to neighborhoods in hundreds of U.S. cities. The grades supposedly reflected real estate risk and mortgage security and were based in part on recent sales histories and a neighborhood’s proximity to various industries. Significantly, residents’ race, religion, class, and ethnicity were also considered. The system had four color classes: green (considered the best), blue, yellow, and red.

Decreases in body sizes of animals related to recent climate warming can affect population persistence and stability. However, direct observations of average sizes over time and their interrelationships with underlying density-dependent and density-independent processes remain poorly understood owing to the lack of appropriate long-term datasets. We measured body size of two species common to headwater streams in coastal and Cascades ecoregions of the Pacific Northwest of North America over multiple decades, comparing old-growth and managed forests. We found consistent decreases in median...

Nitrous oxide (N2O), a greenhouse gas with ozone destruction potential, is mitigated by the microbial reduction to dinitrogen catalyzed by N2O reductase (NosZ). Bacteria with NosZ activity have been studied at circumneutral pH but the microbiology of low pH N2O reduction has remained elusive. Acidic (pH < 5) tropical forest soils were collected in the Luquillo Experimental Forest in Puerto Rico, and microcosms maintained with low (0.02 mM) and high (2 mM) N2O assessed N2O reduction at pH 4.5 and 7.3. All microcosms consumed N2O, with lag times of up to 7 months observed in microcosms with...

Spotted lanternfly, Lycorma delicatula White (Hemiptera: Fulgoridae), is an invasive Southeast Asian planthopper that was recently introduced into the eastern United States and spreads along human transportation corridors by 'hitch-hiking' on vehicles and cargo. To better understand the risk of establishment when mobile life stages are moved, it is critical to know how long spotted lanternfly mobile life stages will survive without food and water under different temperatures. This work reports on spotted lanternfly first, second, and third instar nymphal and adult survival without food...

Both Ceratocystis lukuohia and C. huliohia have been associated with Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death (ROD), an emerging threat to ʻōhiʻa (Metrosideros polymorpha), a keystone forest tree species. The vascular wilt disease caused by C. lukuohia has been recently described and is responsible for the widespread ROD epidemic on Hawai'i Island. However, the role of C. huliohia in ROD development and tree death is not clear. Artificial inoculation of field-grown ʻōhiʻa with C. huliohia and dissections of naturally infected, early symptomatic forest trees were conducted to confirm pathogenicity on field grown...

Extended growing season lengths under climatic warming suggest increased time for plant growth. However, research has focused on climatic impacts to the timing or duration of distinct phenological events. Comparatively little is known about impacts to the relative time allocation to distinct phenological events, for example, the proportion of time dedicated to leaf growth versus senescence. We use multiple satellite and ground-based observations to show that, despite recent climate change during 2001 to 2020, the ratio of time allocated to vegetation green-up over senescence has remained...

Humanity has a shrinking window to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, yet climate action is still lacking on both individual and policy levels. We argue that this is because behavioral interventions have largely neglected the basic principles of operant conditioning as one set of tools to promote collective climate action. In this perspective, we propose an operant conditioning framework that uses rewards and punishments to shape transportation, food, waste, housing, and civic actions. This framework highlights the value of reinforcement in encouraging the switch to low-emission...

Nature-based climate solutions (NCS) are championed as a primary tool to mitigate climate change, especially in forested regions capable of storing and sequestering vast amounts of carbon. New England is one of the most heavily forested regions in the United States (>75% forested by land area), and forest carbon is a significant component of climate mitigation policies. Large infrequent disturbances, such as hurricanes, are a major source of uncertainty and risk for policies relying on forest carbon for climate mitigation, especially as climate change is projected to alter the intensity...

Providing outdoor recreational opportunities to people and protecting wildlife are dual goals of many land managers. However, recreation is associated with negative effects on wildlife, ranging from increased stress hormones1,2 to shifts in habitat use3,4,5 to lowered reproductive success.6,7 Noise from recreational activities can be far reaching and have similar negative effects on wildlife, yet the impacts of these auditory encounters are less studied and are often unobservable. We designed a field-based experiment to both isolate and quantify the effects of recreation noise on several...