Treesearch

The career of Sherwin J. Carlquist was marked by numerous pioneering contributions to botany and especially to ecological and evolutionary wood anatomy. He developed some of the most important modern functional hypotheses for wood, including postulating a biomechanical and fluid dynamic role for helical thickenings (HT) in seasonally dry environments. Here we endeavor to honor Carlquist’s legacy by summarizing existing observations, explicitly acknowledging that HT represent a range of non-homologous and likely functionally disparate features, and exploring HT functional hypotheses in...

Previous studies on computer vision wood identification (CVWID) have assumed or implied that the quality of sanding or knifing preparation of the transverse surface of wood specimens could influence model performance, but its impact is unknown and largely unexplored. This study investigates how variations in surface preparation quality of test specimens could affect the predictive accuracy of a previously published 24-class XyloTron CVWID model for Peruvian timbers. The model was trained on images of Peruvian wood specimens prepared at 1500 sanding grit and tested on images of independent...

Fire is one of the greatest gifts given to humankind. Fire has lived on the North American continent since its beginning, shaping ecosystems and shaped by people. In the modern era, the balance between fire, land, and people has been unsettled, disrupting both ecosystems and society. Many of these challenges are expected to worsen in the years to come.

Studies in recent decades show strong evidence of physical and biological changes in the Arctic tundra largely in response to exceptionally rapid rates of warming. Given the important implications of these changes on ecosystem services, hydrology, surface energy balance, carbon budgets, and climate feedbacks, research on the trends and patterns of these changes is becoming increasingly important and can help better constrain estimates of local, regional, and global impacts as well as inform mitigation and adaptation strategies. Despite this high need, scientific understanding of tundra...

Implementation of broad landscape management goals to confront the wildfire crisis occurs at the project level and is subject to public scrutiny. Although the research literature demonstrates broad public acceptability of fuels treatments, a closer examination of the studies reveals notable variation in acceptance. Survey data from thirteen western U.S. communities using the same measures of acceptability are presented. Results highlight high acceptance with notable variation in treatment type and study location. Results indicate that the devil is in the details.

ABSTRACT Issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion are becoming increasingly important to park and protected area managers. Recently, several Executive Orders have established policies and priorities for steering public lands to better serve the diversity of the US public. Certain groups, compared to the US population at large, are underrepresented as visitors to parks and protected areas in the US, including BIPOC communities (Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color), women, people with disabilities, veterans, people with lower socioeconomic status, and the elderly. This...

The purposes of this study were to support a watershed modeling analysis by evaluating the ability to the Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) model to estimate sediment generated by high traffic gravel roads, and to determine the erodibility of two designs of high-traffic gravel roads. In many watersheds, the road network can be a major source of sediment. The ability to predict erosion from roads, evaluate the effects of design and management on road sedimentation, and compare sediment from roads to other sources of sediment in the watershed is an ongoing need by watershed managers....

The Arctic Council working group, the Conservation of Arctic Flora and Fauna (CAFF) established the Circumpolar Biodiversity Monitoring Programme (CBMP), an international network of scientists, governments, Indigenous organizations, and conservation groups working to harmonize and integrate efforts to extend and develop monitoring and assessment of the Arctic’s biodiversity. Its relevance stretches beyond the Arctic to a broad range of regional and global initiatives and agreements. This paper describes the process and approach taken in the last two decades to develop and implement the...

Ongoing climate change in the boreal forests of western North America is associated with wildfires which are increasing in extent and severity, thus impacting mycorrhizal fungal communities through fungal mortality and shifts in host species and age. We planted three native tree species, Picea mariana, Picea glauca, and Populous tremuloides, and non-native Pinus contorta var. latifolia at 22 post-fire sites, encompassing wide variation in fire severity and environmental gradients, across Interior Alaska. We characterized fungal community composition using Illumina MiSeq. Fire severity had...

While biochar and manure can provide considerable benefits to soil properties, how these amendments may alter soil microbial activity and decomposition processes remains unknown. In a split-split-split-plot experiment, we amended a sandy loam soil with three rates of manure (whole plot; 0, 3, 9 Mg ha-1) and biochar (split-plot; 0, 2.5, 10 Mg ha-1), and installed three species of wood stakes (split-split-split plot; triploid poplar, Populus tomentosa Carr.; trembling aspen, Populus tremuloides Michx.; and loblolly pine, Pinus taeda L.) on the soil surface and in the mineral soil (split-split...