Treesearch

Gap dynamics facilitate recruitment of late-successional species such as northern white-cedar (Thuja occidentalis L.). For this reason, harvests that result in partial rather than complete canopy removal have been suggested for cedar. However, success of regenerating cedar following partial harvests is uncertain, especially where there is heavy browsing by white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus Zimmerman) or snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus). Efforts to understand how partial harvests and browsing interact to affect natural regeneration of cedar have been limited. We inventoried partially...

Understanding microhabitat use is needed to make sound conservation decisions for at-risk, patchy-habitat specialists, such as rock-habitat specialists. Rock habitats offer unique microclimatic refugia for reptiles and mammals. Eastern small-footed bats (Myotis leibii (Audubon and Bachman, 1842)) use rock roosts during the summer, but data on these summer roosts are lacking for this species classified as (critically) imperiled in several US states and Canadian provinces and globally endangered. Our goal was to characterize the structure and microclimate of Myotis leibii roosts at the...

This publication is part of the White Oak Initiative’s (www.whiteoakinitiative.org) Upland Oak and White Oak Silviculture Practices Series designed to provide foundational information necessary for sustainable management of white oak and upland oak forests.

Urban forests are an essential part of adaptation and mitigation solutions for climate change. To understand the relationship between carbon storage, sequestration, and stand density in the most heavily-managed aspect of the urban forest—street trees—we modified the parameters and algorithms of a rural forest dynamics model, the perfect plasticity approximation (PPA), to reflect urban street tree conditions. The main changes in the new street tree PPA are the maintenance of a prescribed stand density via management of recruitment, the possibility of crown-roof overlap, and increased...

In western Canada, decades of oil-and-gas exploration have fragmented boreal landscapes with a dense network of linear forest disturbances (seismic lines). These seismic lines are implicated in the decline in wildlife populations that are adapted to function in unfragmented forest landscapes. In particular, anthropogenic disturbances have led to a decline of woodland caribou populations due to increasing predator access to core caribou habitat. Restoration of seismic lines aims to reduce the landscape fragmentation and stop the decline of caribou populations. However, planning restoration...

Fire activity during 2020-2021 in California, USA was unprecedented in the modern record. More than 19,000 km2 of forest vegetation burned (10x more than the historical average), potentially affecting the habitat of 508 vertebrate species. Of the >9,000 km2 that burned at high-severity, 87% occurred in large patches that exceeded historical estimates of maximum high-severity patch size. In this two-year period, 100 vertebrate species experienced fire across >10% of their geographic range, 16 of which were species of conservation concern. These 100 species experienced high-severity fire...

Background: Private-sector urban and community forestry (U&CF) is a major segment of the green industry with substantial socio-ecological and economic contributions to urban and sub-urban communities. The COVID-19 pandemic reportedly caused heterogeneous impacts on businesses, the workforce, and various sectors of the overall economy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the perceived impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on private businesses carrying out U&CF activities in the Southern United States. Methods: Using data collected through an online survey distributed across the Southern...

FloodWise is a pilot program that proposes nature-based solutions (NBS) for flood hazard mitigation (risk reduction) in eastern North Carolina to control stormwater runoff for brief periods of time. The program would provide financial incentives and technical assistance to rural landowners to adopt NBS on their properties. In this study, we assessed landowners’ willingness to accept (WTA) payments for adopting NBS on their properties using a payment card contingent valuation method (CVM) via a mail survey. Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) incentivize landowners to participate in...