Treesearch

In the USA, there are an estimated 9.6 million families, individuals, trusts, estates, and family partnerships, collectively referred to as family forest owners, who control 110 million ha of forestland or 39% of the country’s forests. Between 2000 and 2019, 640 peer-reviewed articles were published that focused on family forest owners in the USA. These articles were published across 95 sources with the Journal of Forestry, Forest Policy and Economics, Small-scale Forestry, and Journal of Extension being the most common. Most articles focused on geographic or participatory subsets of...

Aims. Nitrogen (N) enrichment from excessive fertilization influences the coupling of nutrients in terrestrial ecosystems, but whether it could alter the scaling relationships between multinutrients [including macronutrients: N, phosphorus (P), potassium, calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg) and micronutrients: manganese (Mn), iron (Fe) and zinc] remains unclear. Methods. We conducted an control experiment using two-year-old Chinese hickory (Carya cathayensis) saplings in hydroponics system, with six levels of N fertilization, to evaluate variations in scaling relationships of multinutrient...

This study investigated broad patterns in communities of ectomycorrhizal fungi from three Florida habitats (sandhills, scrub, and pine rocklands) and the ability of spore bank fungi to associate with Pinus elliottii (slash pine) and Pinus densa (south Florida slash pine). Efforts to replant pines in the endangered pine rocklands are vital to the persistence of this habitat, yet little is known about the ectomycorrhizal fungi communities or how they may differ from those in other pine-dominated habitats in Florida. We used high-throughput amplicon sequencing (HTS) to assess baseline fungal...

When the National Forest System (NFS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service offers a timber sale that receives no bids from prospective buyers, it can consume valuable resources, delay forest management activities, and cause the NFS to miss mandated targets. Previous work revealed that the drivers of no-bid sales have two distinct levels: proximate causes and underlying factors. To further explore these issues, researchers with the Forest Service Southern Research Station sent a survey to NFS personnel in February 2021 and requested that anyone involved in timber sales in...

The success of long-term wildlife monitoring programs can be influenced by many factors and study designs often represent compromises between spatial scales and costs. Adaptive monitoring programs can iteratively manage this tension by adopting new cost-efficient technologies, which can provide projects the opportunity to reallocate costs to address new hypotheses, adapt to changing ecological conditions, or adjust sampling scale or resolution. If there is interest in longer time series of monitoring data, methodological transitions may necessitate integrated models to link newer data with...

For centuries, the Caribbean island of Puerto Rico has been subjected to the introduction of nonnative plant species. Various human-related activities such as agriculture, horticulture, and ornamental landscaping have resulted in the naturalization of numerous species, some of which are now representative of the island’s natural landscape. Recent floristic surveys in anthropized areas across the island yielded three new non-native plant records. We present the first reports with vouchers of Asystasia gangetica (L.) T. Anderson subsp. micrantha (Nees) Ensermu, Emilia praetermissa Milne-Redh....

A basic tenant of ecological stoichiometric theory applied to plant nutrition is that, in the absence of metabolic selection of elements, plants should reflect their soil environment. We used ecological and stoichiometric data to gain insight into how stoichiometry might influence the productivity of primary and secondary forest stands dominated by native tree species. The study involved 2 sets of measurements of soil and litter stoichiometry 26 years apart plus results from long-term ecological research in similar forest types and watersheds in the vicinity of our study area within the...

In the eastern United States, the use of prescribed fire as a silvicultural technique to manage for desirable upland tree species is increasing in popularity. Bark physical properties such as thickness, density, and porosity have known associations with fire tolerance among species. These physical properties simultaneously influence rainfall interception and canopy storage and thus are of interest across a range of disciplines. Furthermore, while these characteristics are innate to a species, it is unknown whether repeated exposure to fire facilitates physical change in bark structure and...

Mobile acoustic surveys allow estimates of overall bat activity, relative abundance, and species richness across large areas. Protocols for estimating relative abundance recommend using non-sinuous routes to ensure individual bats are only recorded once. We conducted mobile acoustic surveys along 12 sinuous routes in the mountainous terrain of northeastern Tennessee. Our objectives were to 1) determine if more calls were recorded in sinuous segments of mobile survey routes, thus violating assumptions of mobile surveys, and 2) analyze mobile transect data to assess bat habitat use. To test...

Mounting evidence suggests that climate change will cause shifts of tree species range and abundance (biomass). Abundance changes under climate change are likely to occur prior to a detectable range shift. Disturbances are expected to directly affect tree species abundance and composition, and could profoundly influence tree species spatial distribution within a geographical region. However, how multiple disturbance regimes will interact with changing climate to alter the spatial distribution of species abundance remains unclear. We simulated such forest demographic processes using a...