Treesearch

Yellow pine and mixed-conifer (YPMC) forests of California’s Sierra Nevada have experienced widespread fire suppression for over a century, resulting in ingrowth and densification of trees, heavy fuel accumulation, and shifts in species composition. Under warmer and drier climates, these forests are primed for stand-replacing fires and severe drought mortality, requiring management interventions to improve their resilience and mitigate future impacts. Observations from functioning frequent-fire systems (e.g., contemporary reference sites) can provide key insights about pattern-process...

Many coastal forests stretching from central California to southwest Oregon are threatened or have been impacted by the invasive forest pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, the cause of sudden oak death. We analyzed a set of stand-level forest treatments aimed at preventing or mitigating disease impacts on stand composition, biomass, and fuels using a before–after-control-intervention experiment with a re-evaluation after 5 years. We compared the effects of restorative management for invaded stands and preventative treatments for uninvaded forests with two stand-level experiments. The restorative...

The Sierra Nevada has experienced unprecedented wildfires and reduced snowmelt runoff in recent decades, due partially to anthropogenic climate change and over a century of fire suppression. To address these challenges, public land agencies are planning forest restoration treatments, which have the potential to both increase water availability and reduce the likelihood of uncontrollable wildfires. However, the impact of forest restoration on snowpack is site specific and not well understood across gradients of climate and topography. To improve our understanding of how forest restoration...

It is of great significance to understand how urbanization and greenspace areas gradient affect urban plant biodiversity for urban renewal and planning toward urban biodiversity conservation. However, the factors affecting plant diversity under rapid urbanization remain unknown in many cities. To this end,702 vegetation sampling plots from 219 2 km × 2 km grids were selected to explore the urban plant biodiversity variation within two perpendicular 10 km width transects running across the urban center in north-south and east-west directions within the 6th ring road in Beijing, China....

Northern red oak (Quercus rubra L.) is an ecologically and economically important forest tree native to North America. We present a chromosome-scale genome of Q. rubra generated by the combination of PacBio sequences and chromatin conformation capture (Hi-C) scaffolding. This is the first reference genome from the red oak clade (section Lobatae). The Q. rubra assembly spans 739 Mb with 95.27% of the genome in 12 chromosomes and 33,333 protein-coding genes. Comparisons to the genomes of Quercus lobata and Quercus mongolica revealed high collinearity, with intrachromosomal structural...

Although reported to be rare, human fatalities resulting from wild pig (Sus scrofa) attacks do occur. Toward a better understanding of patterns in fatal wild pig attacks, we synthesized worldwide reports of wild pig attacks on humans between 2000 and 2019. We documented 163 separate reports of fatal wild pig attacks that resulted in 172 human deaths. On average, 8.6 human deaths occurred annually due to wild pig attacks during those 2 decades. The majority of fatal attacks resulted in a single human death; however, there were 6 cases in which an individual fatal attack resulted in 2–4...

Tree rings provide detailed information on the age, annual wood production and growth trends of trees over time. Furthermore, by relating tree ring information to spatially and temporally specific environmental (e.g., precipitation, temperature, pollutant input) data, factors that modulate radial growth over time can be identified (e.g., Stern et al. 2021; Stern et al. 2022). Despite the great power of using tree ring measurements to help understand tree health, productivity and responses to the environment, this broad utility is limited by the need for expensive specialized instrumentation...

Predator-prey interactions can be profoundly influenced by vegetation conditions, particularly when predator and prey prefer different habitats. Although such interactions have proven challenging to study for small and cryptic predators, recent methodological advances substantially improve opportunities for understanding how vegetation influences prey acquisition and strengthen conservation planning for this group. The California Spotted Owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis) is well known as an old-forest species of conservation concern, but whose primary prey in many regions - woodrats...

Context The concept of landscape heterogeneity is central to species conservation; yet understanding the processes by which heterogeneity affects species can be challenging in practice. Complex and sometimes difficult-to-measure responses of species may reflect the outcome of life-history trade-offs shaped by different landscape properties. Objectives We tested the hypothesis that a mosaic of forest stand types affected hunting and breeding success for California spotted owls (Strix occidentailis occidentalis). Methods We integrated high-temporal-resolution GPS tags, video monitoring of...

Climate and land-use change are modifying the availability of food and water resources, which is driving more wildlife to the wildland-urban interface. For many wildlife populations, use of these areas still requires habitat connectivity both within the interface and/or to wildland habitats. However, navigating these areas can be difficult due to human development and sensory pollutants, such as artificial night light. Determining how these components of urbanization influence the behaviors and functional connectivity of species is important for managing wildlife within these mixed-use...