Treesearch

The field of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of materials is constantly evolving. This is especially true in the area of wood and fiber-based materials. A significant effort has been devoted toward the discovery and development of NDE technologies for use with wood-based products. Today, research and technology transfer efforts are underway throughout the world to further the development and use of nondestructive methods to address the many challenges that arise with using forest resources. Efforts are underway that span a broad spectrum of utilization and technology issues from those that...

Biogeographic history can set initial conditions for vegetation community assemblages that determine their climate responses at broad extents that land surface models attempt to forecast. Numerous studies have indicated that evolutionarily conserved biochemical, structural, and other functional attributes of plant species are captured in visible-to-short wavelength infrared, 400 to 2,500 nm, reflectance properties of vegetation. Here, we present a remotely sensed phylogenetic clustering and an evolutionary framework to accommodate spectra, distributions, and traits. Spectral properties...

Background: In ecosystems where fire has been excluded, pyrosilviculture can restore some processes historically maintained by fire while mitigating risk where fire is inevitable. Pyrosilviculture in crown fire-adapted forests is, however, limited by insight into the temporal window of fire return matching canopy seedbank development. Here, we characterized demographic responses to fire and non-native pine pitch canker infection in a chronosequence of serotinous bishop pine stands burned at high-severity to quantify (1) temporal patterns of seedbank development given seed viability and...

Dryland woodland ecosystems worldwide have experienced widespread drought- and heat-related tree mortality events coupled with extreme wildfire behavior. In contrast to other forest types where the emphasis has been on the silvicultural enhancement of ecosystem resilience and restoration of structural heterogeneity, limited frameworks are available for management to improve drought resilience in semiarid woodlands. This challenge is especially acute in pinyon-juniper woodlands, a dominant vegetation type across western North America that has experienced extensive tree die-off over the past...

A recent climate-induced tree mortality event in California, USA has led to dramatic landscape-level changes in the southern Sierra Nevada. Wide-spread conifer mortality was documented in habitat occupied by fisher (Pekania pennanti), a mature-forest associated species of conservation concern in this region. We analyzed fisher scats collected on the Sierra National Forest from the pre-tree-mortality period (PreTM, 2011-2013) and posttree-mortality period (PostTM, 2017-2018). We used DNA metabarcoding to successfully identify taxa and summarized diet composition for 109 PreTM and 102 PostTM...

Animal tool use has been documented for a variety of wildlife, but few studies have evaluated tool use by bears. We used long-term video data to observe and classify behaviors of wild American black bears (Ursus americanus) in western Montana, USA, during 2012-2022.We present video-documentation of true and borderline tool use by multiple individuals. Six bears (4F:2M) picked up sticks from the bottom of a creek pool and then manipulated the sticks with their forepaws to scratch and/or rub themselves. In addition, one bear manipulated a tree sapling near a cage trap in an apparent attempt...

Agricultural production in the western United States relies on water supplies from mountain source-water systems that are sensitive to impacts from wildfire and a changing climate. The resultant challenges to water supply forecasting directly impact agricultural producers and irrigation managers who rely on snowmelt and streamflow forecasts for crop selection and irrigation scheduling. To date, much research has focused on source-water system processes and agricultural production separately, but in this short communication we highlight a substantial need for new research connecting these...

A seed-feeding weevil introduced to North America (NA) as a biological control agent of the invasive toadflax Linaria dalmatica (L.) Mill., identified then as Gymnetron antirrhini “Dalmatian host race” and subsequently confirmed as established, was revealed through our study to be a separate species, i.e., Rhinusa dieckmanni (Behne) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae). This weevil species was presumed to be endemic in its native range, with a distribution restricted to Mount Rila in southwestern Bulgaria. We conducted a comprehensive study of seedfeeding weevils associated with L. dalmatica, L....

Fuel and wildfire management decisions related to fuel break construction, maintenance, and use in fire suppression suffer from limited information on fuel break success rates and drivers of effectiveness. We built a dataset of fuel break encounters with recent large wildfires in Southern California and their associated biophysical, suppression, weather, and fire behavior characteristics to develop statistical models of fuel break effectiveness with boosted regression. Our results suggest that the dominant influences on fuel break effectiveness are suppression, weather, and fire behavior....

Background: Estimating the factors affecting the probability of a wildfire reaching the wildland urban interface (WUI) can help managers make decisions to prevent WUI property loss. This study compiles data on fire progression, wind, landscape characteristics, and fireline built to estimate the probability of an active fire reaching nearby WUI blocks. We started by constructing funnel-shaped analysis zones between recorded fire perimeters and WUI blocks. We used zonal analysis to characterize landscape and fireline arrangement and then used a random forest modeling approach to quantify the...