Treesearch

South Asia, one of the most important food producing regions in the world, is facing a significant threat to food grain production under the influence of extreme high temperatures. Furthermore, the probability of simultaneous trends in extreme precipitation patterns and extreme heat conditions, which can have compounding effects on crops, is a likelihood in South Asia. In this study, we found complex relationships between extreme heat and precipitation patterns, as well as compound effects on major crops (rice and wheat) in South Asia. We also employed event coincidence analysis (ECA) to...

Burn severity assessment is vital for the development of effective fire management strategies. Subtropical forests in Southern China support rich forest resources but are also disturbed by frequent forest fires, resulting in varying burn severity areas. However, the lack of accuracy assessment of burn severity based on spectral indices has limited our understanding of spatial patterns and drivers of burn severity in this region and the implementation of effective forest fire management. In this study, we compared the accuracy of different spectral indices from Landsat 8 Operational Land...

Ensemble habitat selection modeling is becoming a popular approach among ecologists to answer different questions. Since we are still in the early stages of development and application of ensemble modeling, there remain many questions regarding performance and parameterization. One important gap, which this paper addresses, is how the number of background points used to train models influences the performance of the ensemble model. We used an empirical presence-only dataset and three different selections of background points to train scale-optimized habitat selection models using six...

The European Space Agency SnowSAR instrument is a side-looking, dual-polarised (VV/VH), X/Ku band synthetic aperture radar (SAR), operable from various sizes of aircraft. Between 2010 and 2013, the instrument was deployed at several sites in Northern Finland, Austrian Alps and northern Canada. The purpose of the airborne campaigns was to measure the backscattering properties of snow-covered terrain to support the development of snow water equivalent retrieval techniques using SAR. SnowSAR was deployed in Sodankylä, Northern Finland, for a single flight mission in March 2011 and 12 missions...

Ecological theory predicts a pulse disturbance results in loss of soil organic carbon and short-term respiration losses that exceed recovery of productivity in many ecosystems. However, fundamental uncertainties remain in our understanding of ecosystem recovery where spatiotemporal variation in structure and function are not adequately represented in conceptual models. Here we show that wildfire in sagebrush shrublands results in multiscale responses that vary with ecosystem properties, landscape position, and their interactions. Consistent with ecological theory, soil pH increased and...

Background: Fire danger indexes (FDIs) are used as proxies for fire potential and are often developed for specific locations. For practical purposes, the extrapolation of the underlying calculations into novel locations is common, but it is generally uncertain if the relationships between FDIs and fire potential observed in the environment in which the index was developed are equally relevant in others. For example, although a topographically, ecologically, and climatologically complex country, f ire danger forecasts in Peru use a standard set of nationwide thresholds applied to the Fire...

To better reserve food from the interaction with oxygen, moisture, and (light) ultraviolet (UV) radiation, typical polymer film packaging is produced as opaque or metalized sheets. There is increasing consumer demand for multifunctional transparent packaging or a transparent window to allow viewing of food before consumer purchase. Cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs), as a type of sustainable and biodegradable material, show great potential for transparent food packaging by providing good oxygen permeation resistance. However, CNCs are poor in preventing UV light transmission, sensitive to...

Paper based packaging has the potential to replace many plastic-based systems if the required barrier properties can be obtained. Water borne barrier coatings have the potential to generate good barrier layers, but their performance is often less than expected. Recent work has shown improved performance of these coatings when applied on paper that has a cellulose nanofiber layer. Here, papers with a cellulose nanofiber layer were coated with barrier coatings at different coat weights applied as single-layers, as double-layers, and single-layers pressed together in a hot press in order to...

Firecracker penstemon is native to northern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, southern California, east central and southern Nevada, central and southern Utah, and southwestern Colorado (Munz and Keck 1973; Hitchcock and Cronquist 2018). It occurs in all North American deserts except the Chihuahuan and in the Colorado Plateau, Wasatch Mountains, Utah Canyonlands, San Bernardino Mountains, and Arizona mountains and sky islands (Cronquist et al. 1984; Taylor 1992; Taylor 1998; Xerces Society & USDA NRCS 2012). It has become naturalized in some areas outside its natural range through its use...

Lemon scurfpea is widely distributed, occurring in the western half of the US and in Alberta and Saskatchewan, Canada (Hermann 1966; Toft and Welsh 1972; Hickman 1993; USDA NRCS 2021). It is most widespread in the western Great Plains and the Intermountain West (Barneby 1989; Grimm 2001; Egan and Reveal 2009; Welsh et al. 2016).