Treesearch

Wildfires usually increase the hydrological and erosive response of forest areas, carrying high environmental, human, cultural, and financial on- and off-site effects. Post-fire soil erosion control measures have been proven effective at mitigating such responses, especially at the slope scale, but there is a knowledge gap as to how costeffective these treatments are.In this work, we review the effectiveness of post-fire soil erosion mitigation treatments at reducing erosion rates over the first post-fire year and provide their application costs. This allowed assessing the treatments’...

We have developed a version of the Continuous Change Detection and Classification algorithm within the Google Earth Engine environment. It has been used with 20 years of Landsat data (1999-2019) to produce a new, publicly available global dataset of pre-computed time series break points and harmonic coefficients. We present results from regional use cases demonstrating classification and change detection with this new dataset and compare them to other temporal compositing techniques. Our results demonstrate that gains in overall accuracy using CCDC may be small on a yearly basis, but they...

Current and past climatic changes can shift plant climatic niches, which may cause spatial overlap or separation between related taxa. The former often leads to hybridization and introgression, which may generate novel variation and influence the adaptive capacity of plants. An additional mechanism facilitating adaptations to novel environments and an important evolutionary driver in plants is polyploidy as the result of whole genome duplication. Artemisia tridentata (big sagebrush) is a landscape-dominating foundational shrub in the western United States which occupies distinct ecological...

Due to the devastating effects of butternut canker disease, efforts to protect the endangered butternut (Juglans cinerea) tree through resistance breeding have been a primary focus of forest restoration efforts. Walnut witches'-broom (WWB) disease poses a serious threat to these restoration efforts. This study sought to confirm the presence of the WWB disease phytoplasma, 'Candidatus Phytoplasma pruni’, in butternut research plantings in Indiana using molecular methods and Sanger sequencing and to identify butternut families affected by the disease. We also sought to better understand the...

Segregation by racialized categories is common to cities across the world and its social effects are well studied. However, the environmental effects—the ecology of segregation—have received less attention. Racialized segregation persists through time and is associated with environmental hazards or lack of amenities. The environmental burdens of racial segregation are increasingly documented and this paper synthesizes the dynamics of segregation and the dynamics of ecological conditions associated with it. The ‘adaptive cycle of resilience,’ an important social–ecological theory, is...

Spathius galinae is a larval parasitoid native to the Russian Far East that was approved for release in the United States in 2015 for biological control of the emerald ash borer (EAB), Agrilus planipennis, an invasive beetle from Asia responsible for widespread mortality of ash trees (Fraxinus spp.) in North America. From 2015 to 2017, 1,340–1,445 females of S. galinae along with males were released into each release plot, paired with a nonrelease control plot (1–12.5 km apart), at 6 postinvasion forested sites containing abundant pole-sized ash trees in Michigan. By 2018, S. galinae had...

Placing traits into novel evolutionary contexts may profoundly alter their functional roles. Here, we investigated whether the elaiosome, a lipid-rich appendage located on seeds, retained its role as a seed dispersal trait promoting mutualisms with insectivorous ants following human-mediated introduction of the elaiosome-bearing Carduus nutans into the Argentinean Caldenal. This system is located within the Neotropical region, an alleged myrmecochory cold spot. Specifically, we first tested the assumption that the elaiosome mediates the interaction between C. nutans and the native ant...

Fire has always been an important component of many ecosystems, but anthropogenic global climate change is now altering fire regimes over much of Earth's land surface, spurring a more urgent need to understand the physical, biological, and chemical processes associated with fire as well as its effects on human societies. In 2020, AGU launched a Special Collection that spanned 10 journals, soliciting papers under the theme “Fire in the Earth System” to encourage state-of-the-art publications in fire-related science. The completed Special Collection comprises more than 100 papers. Here, we...

Road networks pose many well-documented threats to wildlife, from fragmenting habitats and restricting movement to causing mortality through vehicle collisions. For large, wide-ranging mammals, home range requirements and seasonal migrations often necessitate road crossings, posing threats to human safety, property, and animal survival. Artificial nightlight, emanating from light posts and urban sky glow, is ubiquitous on and around road networks worldwide; however, its effects on road crossing behavior and the associated mortality risk for wildlife are not well understood. By integrating...

Conserving genetic connectivity is fundamental to species persistence, yet rarely is made actionable into spatial planning for imperilled species. Climate change and habitat degradation have added urgency to embrace connectivity into networks of protected areas. Our two-step process integrates a network model with a functional connectivity model, to identify population centres important to maintaining genetic connectivity then to delineate those pathways most likely to facilitate connectivity there among for the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), a species of conservation...