Treesearch

Context: Land-use change, including agricultural expansion, is one of the major drivers of biodiversity loss globally. Given the rapid pace of land-use change, data-driven, strategic, and dynamic conservation planning is imperative.Objectives: We present an exemplar application of using existing data to inform conservation planning. Specifically, we developed a systematic approach for identifying areas of conservation concern due to cannabis cultivation in California, USA.Methods: We used three existing datasets: (1) camera trap data from ten projects (n = 1186); (2) the locations of...

Iran is located in a dry climate zone, and climate change has substantially reduced its precipitation and water resources. Reusing wastewaters from urban communities can meet some requirements for irrigation and fertilization of tree plantations in arid environments, leading to sustainable wastewater recycling, enhanced biomass production, and reduced land degradation. The objective of this study was to test the growth, biomass, nutrition, and heavy-metal accumulation of poplars [Populus nigra L. “62/154,” P. alba L. “20/45,” P. euramericana (Dode) Guinier “92/40”], and willow (Salix...

Tree improvement research is a long-term commitment that is subject to challenges from environmental and human-induced change. Over time, tree health, culture, and economics can be negatively affected by change factors including climate change, pests and/or diseases, regulatory actions, and shifting economic circumstances. In the current paper we describe strategies to leverage short- and long-term field trials for managing different types of change that impact tree improvement. Field trials like those presented here could be used to test new materials and processes, as well as serve as an...

Poplars (Populus L. spp.) are versatile, productive trees that are used in environmental systems worldwide to provide a variety of benefits. Though poplars are recognized for their elevated water use, summaries of existing data on poplar water use, its influencing factors, and the methodologies used to measure it, are lacking. We sought to 1) summarize the sap flow methodologies used to quantify poplar water use, 2) review sap flow-derived water use data reported in the literature for Populus hybrids and non-hybrids, and 3) assess the effects of different intrinsic factors (plant variables)...

Imagine being able to take a bird’s eye view of the forest: you could see the forest structure, how the trees are grouped, the height and size of each tree in a matter of moments as you cruise over. You could fly over the stand today, then again next year and examine the effects of a treatment or a wildfire or an insect outbreak. Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS - aka drones) are starting to allow managers to do just that.

Many nations administer national forest inventory programs for unbiased estimation of forest attributes over broad spatial and temporal extents. However, management and conservation decisions often demand reliable estimates for finer spatiotemporal domains. In the western US, wildfire activity is expanding and postfire regeneration must contend with a warmer, drier climate. We evaluate the potential of K nearest neighbor (KNN) strategies for estimation of stocking across postfire measurements of Forest Inventory & Analysis plots in 11 western US states, and subsequently for model-assisted...

Disease may drive variation in host community structure by modifying the interplay of deterministic and stochastic processes that shape communities. For instance, deterministic processes like ecological selection can benefit species less impacted by disease. When communities have higher levels of disease and disease consistently selects for certain host species, this can reduce variation in host community composition. On the other hand, when host communities are less impacted by disease and selection is weaker, stochastic processes (e.g., drift, dispersal) may play a bigger role in host...

1. As communities assemble, species establishment can be driven by multiple factors. Two such factors, nutrients and consumers, are predicted to interact, but few studies have explored whether this interaction results from synergistically altering the same biotic and abiotic mediators or complementarily altering different mediators.2. To test this, I added seeds of multiple native species to old field communities in which I experimentally manipulated soil nutrients, leaf litter and consumers (insect herbivores and fungal pathogens). Using Bayesian hierarchical modelling, I evaluated the...

Growth and contraction of headwater stream networks determine habitat extent, and open a window to the hyporheic zone. A fundamental challenge is observation of this process: wetted channel extent is dynamic in space and time, with wetted channel length varying by orders of magnitude over the course of a single storm event in headwater catchments. To date, observational data sets are produced from boots-on-the-ground campaigns, drone imaging, or flow presence sensors, which are often laborious and limited in their spatial and temporal extents. Here, we evaluate satellite imagery as a means...