Treesearch

Seasonal ponds often form after spring snowmelt in forests of the Great Lakes region. Although such seasonal ponds are common, few US states set buffer-width guidelines to protect them when harvesting the adjacent upland forest. The objectives of this study were to determine if the carabid beetle assemblages near seasonal ponds differed from those in the adjacent upland forests prior to any logging, and then if these assemblages changed in response to various levels of tree harvesting within and adjacent to the 15-m-wide buffers that surrounded the seasonal ponds. The traps were placed...

Beech leaf disease (BLD) is a foliar disease of American beech (Fagus grandifolia) that manifests as gall symptoms in leaves caused by infestations from Litylenchus crenatae ssp. mccannii, a plant‐parasitic nematode. As the disease progresses, infestations lead to bud abortion, crown deterioration and branch dieback. While BLD is known to impair leaf function, the impacts of the disease on tree carbon allocation and growth are unresolved. Here, we sampled three forest stands across a gradient of disease severity to assess how BLD influences the storage of non‐structural carbohydrates (NSC)...

Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) is an increasingly common method for monitoring birds and other sound-producing organisms at scale, but methods that digest these data streams into ecological insight remain underdeveloped. Specifically, using PAM and classification algorithms powered by artificial intelligence (AI) to uncover the phenology of vocal animals is an emerging use of these data but currently lacks standardized, repeatable methods with verified connections to biological phenomena. Here, we articulate specific hypotheses regarding the relationship between avian vocal activity and...

Invasive species are spreading globally, threatening ecosystems, biodiversity, agriculture and human health. When efforts to prevent the establishment of invasive species fail and eradication is not possible, containment becomes necessary to slow or stop the spread of established invaders. A major question is, therefore, how to allocate treatments across space and time to contain populations cost‐effectively.Here, we examine how to optimize strategies for slowing the spread of the spongy moth (Lymantria dispar) in North America by utilizing gaps with lower densities of host plants. Around...

Butternut (Juglans cinerea) has been decimated due to butternut canker disease (BCD). To date, much of the observed disease resistance in butternut occurs in hybrids with Japanese walnut (J. ailantifolia), a non-native species which was introduced to the US and naturally hybridizes with butternut. We screened a US range-wide collection of butternut and hybrid butternut, including over 300 open-pollinated families, for susceptibility to BCD. Trees were planted in Indiana, US, in two areas (with high or low disease levels) and allowed to become naturally infected. After 10 years, severity of...

Purpose of Review: The genus Anoplophora includes 52 species, of which three are known to be invasive and a fourth has recently been identified as a potential international high-risk invasive. One species, the Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis (Motschulsky)), has been called one of the 100 worst global invasive species. Here, we present an overview of available information regarding members of the genus Anoplophora at risk of spreading beyond their native ranges, including summaries of their ecology, economic impacts, management, and taxonomy, with an emphasis on information...

Peatland development is affected by changing climates, disturbances such as fire, and autogenic processes. Peatlands may be susceptible to periods of peat loss or reduced accumulation resulting in hiatuses in the peat stratigraphy. At eight minerotrophic peatlands in isolated topographic depressions in western Washington State, peat accumulation rates were reconstructed using radiocarbon-dated continuous peat cores. Age-depth models, fit to 7 to 11 radiocarbon dates and known tephra ages per peatland, were built using a Bayesian approach that constrains the range of potential peat accumulat...

Differential thermal analysis (DTA) is a laboratory technique used to assess cold tolerance of plant tissue by detecting low temperature exotherms released when intracellular water freezes and cells are damaged. Measurements are made by placing samples on thermoelectric modules (TEMs) in a programmable freezer, slowly reducing the temperature, and detecting the latent heat of fusion released when intracellular water undergoes a phase change from liquid to solid. TEMs are solid-state Peltier devices that are commonly used for heating or cooling of electronics depending on the direction of...

Natural and working lands are often touted as natural climate solutions due to their ability to take up and store carbon, and land managers are increasingly tasked with considering how management actions impact carbon outcomes alongside other management goals. As a result, there is a need to assess how management actions may drive trade‐offs and co‐benefits between multiple management goals. However, quantitative analysis of trade‐offs is not feasible for many local‐scale management projects.We used a case study in an oak savanna in south‐eastern Wisconsin, U.S.A. to develop and test a...

Ecological restoration is essential to meeting global biodiversity conservation goals. Given limited conservation budgets, deciding where to restore habitat is a key challenge for the coming decade. We developed a spatially explicit framework to optimize ecological restoration site selection by integrating land use history, species distributions, and economic costs. The framework includes the following steps: identify potential restoration area based on relevant environmental measures like land use; identify species of interest; calculate restoration benefits by modeling habitat and...