Treesearch

Wildfire simultaneously disrupts ecosystem carbon, water, and soil processes, yet these coupled effects and postfire recovery trajectories cannot be reliably assessed from spectral vegetation indices alone. Here, we developed a fine-scale, multi-dimensional framework to quantify wildfire impacts and post-fire ecohydrological recovery, using the 2016 megafire in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the eastern United States as a testbed. This framework integrated gap-filled 30 m NASA Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 surface reflectance with an expanded diagnostic ecosystem model (Coupled...

Biomass harvesting is common across the northeastern United States, yet plant and soil responses in the years-to-decades after harvest are poorly understood. We assessed regenerating species composition and foliar and soil element concentrations after clearcutting with whole-tree harvesting, stem-only harvesting, and stem-only harvesting with prescribed burning in spruce-fir-hardwoods in Maine, U.S.A. We made measurements 50 years after the first treatment (applied 1964–65) and within 10 years after the second treatment (applied 2018), providing one of the longest evaluations of biomass...

Premise: The presence of more than two full chromosome sets, polyploidy, is an important component in plant evolution. However, knowledge of the frequency of polyploidization and which pathways contribute to polyploid formation and gene flow among cytotypes remains limited.

Methods: Flow cytometry and chromosome counts were used to determine genome size of Artemisia tridentata parents and offspring. Reduced‐representation sequencing was used on the parents, offspring, and conspecific taxa to confirm genetic relationships among parents and offspring.

Results: A polyploidization...

Historically, oaks have dominated forests and woodlands in the eastern US, but oaks are being replaced by mesophytic tree species. Mesophication was likely triggered by moist, shaded conditions related to fire exclusion, and thus, moisture and fire have been the focus of prior research. However, forests undergoing mesophication also experience high soil nitrogen (N) availability, and timber harvests often create high-light conditions. Oaks may compete poorly with mesophytes in these resource-rich conditions due to their distinct strategies for growth and nutrient acquisition. Here, we...

Dwight Carl Freeman (Fig. 1), known as Carl among friends and collaborators, was born on 7 March 1951 in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Dwight Carl Freeman (1922–2003) and Mary Loenza Wassom (1924-2017). He was named after his father but never used the appellation “Junior,” preferring to be referenced as D. Carl Freeman in contrast to his father’s Dwight C. or Dwight Carl. He was the eldest son with an older sister and two younger brothers. Carl attended public schools in Bountiful, Utah, including Viewmont High School, from which he graduated in 1969. During this time, he was involved in...

1. Dryland forests face multiple climate change-related threats, including more frequent droughts and shifts in the seasonality of precipitation. While dryland tree species tend to have adaptations for adult persistence during drought, recruitment is often episodic, occurring only in years with favourable conditions. As conditions become more arid, with fewer favourable periods for seedling establishment, variation in the presence of drought-adapted phenotypes among populations may determine recruitment potential and lead to different outcomes.

2. We used a 4-year common garden...

Singleleaf pinyon pine ( Pinus monophylla ) holds both ecological and cultural significance for Indigenous Tribes of the Great Basin, such as the Washoe Tribe of Nevada and California. Recent wildfires on Washoe Tribal lands have resulted in the loss of important pinyon pine groves, prompting collaborative efforts to develop post‐fire restoration guidelines.This study evaluates the influence of microsite conditions on singleleaf pinyon pine post‐fire restoration across gradients of elevation and topography through a collaborative planting experiment on Washoe Tribal lands.One‐year‐old...

As bees’ primary source of protein and lipids, pollen is a nutritional resource key to the persistence of wild populations. Because bee taxa may differ in their pollen macronutrient requirements, and pollen is a limited resource that varies chemically across plants, nutritional niches may shape bees’ ecological interactions. To explore whether members of bee communities occupy pollen nutritional niches, we analysed the protein and lipid content of pollen collected by abundant bee subgenera ( Nomadopsis , Melanosmia , Eumelissodes , Pyrobombus ) and observed their pollen-collecting visitatio...

The Wilderness Act of 1964 created federally designated wilderness areas in the United States for both the use and enjoyment of the American people, as well as the preservation of their wilderness character. Although the Wilderness Act mandates the protection of wilderness character, there is significant management discretion and existing trade-offs of values inherent to wilderness character preservation. Previous social science research explores wilderness visitors’ values regarding the stewardship of wilderness character qualities, as well as how social factors influence visitor behavior...

Accurate PM2.5 monitoring in complex terrain is challenged by sparse regulatory networks and distinct seasonal pollution sources, like winter temperature inversions and summer wildfires. This study develops and evaluates a hybrid modeling framework that integrates bias-corrected low-cost sensor data to improve spatial and temporal PM2.5 mapping in Montana, USA. We first applied a local, observation-based bias correction to dense PurpleAir sensor network, substantially improving agreement with reference monitors (R2 increased from 0.750 for a generic correction to 0.838). This corrected...