Treesearch

Historical land and fire management practices coupled with climate change and modern human development pressures are contributing to larger, more frequent, and more severe wildfires across Western U.S. forests. Human ignitions are the predominant cause of wildfire throughout the United States, necessitating wildfire management strategies that consider both the causes of human ignitions and the factors that influence them. Using a dataset of over 104,000 ignitions from 1992 to 2018 for Oregon and Washington (U.S), we examine the major causes of wildfire ignitions and build regression models...

The wolf (Canis lupus) is among the most controversial of wildlife species. Abundance estimates are required to inform public debate and policy decisions, but obtaining them at biologically relevant scales is challenging. We developed a system for comprehensive population estimation across the Italian alpine region (100,000 km2), involving 1513 trained operators representing 160 institutions. This extensive network allowed for coordinated genetic sample collection and landscape-level spatial capture-recapture analyses that transcended administrative boundaries to produce the first estimates...

The piedmont prairie burrowing crayfish, Distocambarus crockeri Hobbs & Carlson, 1983, is a primary burrowing crayfish endemic to South Carolina, USA. The species is the most widely distributed and studied of the five species of Distocambarus Hobbs, 1981. Surveys have clarified the species distribution and habitat, but, like other burrowing crayfishes, our understanding of its ecology is lacking. We report the discovery of two leucistic specimens of D. crockeri collected in an ephemeral pool in a roadside ditch on 14 March 2022 in Edgefield County, South Carolina. To the best of our...

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether isothermal microcalorimetry can be used to determine the corrosion rates of metals embedded in wood. Metal fasteners were driven into dowels of wood treated with alkaline copper quaternary, a common wood preservative that increases the corrosiveness of wood. The dowels were stored in a nearly 100% relative humidity environment at 27°C for one year; throughout the exposure period, dowels were removed and the thermal power generated by the sample was measured in an isothermal calorimeter. Measurements over the 1-year exposure showed that the...

Recruiting beavers—or building structures that mimic beaver dams—is an increasingly popular method for restoring streams and floodplains in the American West. Doing so can boost the growth of vegetation for cattle forage and improve habitat for fish and wildlife. But with a nature-based solution for stream restoration, anything can happen. Gordon Grant and Susan Charnley, scientists with the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, studied beaver-related restoration projects throughout the U.S. West. This research revealed uncertainties and unintended consequences involved...

Context Mountain meadows occur in specific geomorphological conditions where low-gradient topography promotes fine sediment accumulation and high groundwater tables. Over 150 years of human-caused hydrological degradation of meadows along with fire suppression has resulted in decreased groundwater elevations and encroachment of upland vegetation, greatly diminishing the ecological value of meadows for water storage, baseflow, sediment capture, wildfire resistance, wildlife habitat, and carbon storage. Objectives We aimed to understand where and how frequently meadows historically occurred...

American Eel (Anguilla rostrata) population characteristics and distribution remain drastically understudied in the Caribbean region. We conducted the first island-wide study to evaluate the distribution of density, length, and sex in relation to distance from the mouth of 23 stream reaches in five rivers in Puerto Rico. We found 287 American Eel at a mean density of 156.7 fish/ha. Sex ratios favored females (52:3) but most of the eel sampled were undifferentiated or undetermined. Generalized linear modeling indicated that upstream habitats with low eel density were optimal environments...

Cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) were produced from bleached eucalyptus kraft pulp using microfluidization varying the number of passes through the microfluidizer. CNFs were processed into dry films to elucidate the effect of CNFs morphology on the physical, optical and barrier properties of the films. As the number of passes through the microfluidizer increased, the fibril diameter and degree of polymerization decreased. A higher number of passes produced CNFs with smaller diameter resulting in CNF films with smaller root mean surface (RMS) roughness, higher tensile strength and Young’s...

Background: Wildfire is a major contemporary socio-ecological issue facing the people and natural resources of Southern California, and the prospect that a warming climate could lead to a higher probability of fire in the future is cause for concern. However, connecting climate change to projected burn probability is complex. While most models generally show temperature increasing in the future, changes in humidity and precipitation are less certain, and these changes interact to generate projections of future climates that are sometimes, but not always, more conducive to wildfire. We ran...

Models that simulate ecosystems at local to regional scales require relatively fine resolution climate data. Many methods exist that downscale the native resolution output from global climate models (GCM) to finer resolutions. NASA NEX-DCP30 is a statistically downscaled 30 arcsecond resolution climate dataset widely used for climate change impact studies in the conterminous USA (CONUS), but it did not include vapor pressure data which is essential for many types of models. We downscaled vapor pressure data from 28 global climate models included in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project...