Treesearch

Tropical second-growth forests of the Amazon sequester large amounts of carbon and are important carbon sinks, contributing substantially to climate change mitigation, biodiversity conservation, and providing crucial ecosystem services. Deforestation due to selective logging and shifting cultivation is expanding second-growth forest areas in tropical forest regions, which if well managed, regenerate rapidly over time. Maximum forest canopy height is an important metric of biomass and carbon accumulation in second-growth forests and is strongly influenced by water availability. The water...

Water resource managers need Streamflow Duration Assessment Methods (SDAMs) to predict if streams are ephemeral, intermittent or perennial. Although SDAMs exist for some regions of the United States, no validated SDAM has been developed for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. This review lays the foundation for a US Caribbean SDAM that will be accurate and practical by characterizing trends in stream research and identifying flow class documentation, candidate indicators of streamflow duration and a hydrogeographic framework. We screened 2081 titles and abstracts and 750 full-text...

Brazil contains 15–20% of the world’s biodiversity, with forests originally covering 88% of its territory, now reduced to about 58%. The country has committed to restoring at least 12 million ha of forests by 2030. Seeding is a cost-effective method for tropical forest restoration, widely used in Brazil, but its effectiveness for species-rich forests is still uncertain due to low establishment rates for many species. Most seeding research has involved relatively few species, and many are short-lived, raising concerns about long-term ecosystem development. Invasive grasses and loss of...

This study assessed heat vulnerability in the city of Ponce, Puerto Rico, by integrating satellitederived land surface temperature (LST) data with demographic and socioeconomic indicators. Spatial analysis, principal component analysis (PCA), and multivariate regression were applied to develop a Heat Vulnerability Index (HVI) that maps heat risk across urban neighborhoods. Environmental variables, LST, Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI), impervious surface cover, slope, and elevation, were analyzed alongside indicators such as age, disability, living alone, poverty, and unemploym...

Fish escapes from open water net pens around the globe present persistent and unresolved challenges for aquaculture governance, environmental stewardship, and industry accountability. These escape events are widely recognized as disturbances to ecosystem services and functions [1], carry significant social and financial repercussions [2], and have prompted regional prohibitions on net-pen farming [3]. Particularly concerning is the potential for escaped fish to reproduce successfully [4], which can lead to genetic introgression with wild conspecifics or negative interactions with other...

The release of contaminants into the environment can occur from anthropogenic activities, such as oil extraction and transportation, mining, and industrial processes. Remediation associated with reducing contaminant concentrations, and restoration that improves animals and supporting habitat, are often needed to restore ecosystems to their pre-release, baseline condition. We demonstrated the application of Bayesian Decision Networks (BDNs) with two Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration (NRDAR) case studies. We use a stylized case study of riparian restoration following the...

There is a global abundance of non-perennial rivers and streams, of which are predicted to increase due to environmental change and anthropogenic influences. However, most modeled representations of streamflow have been constructed with perennial systems in mind, leaving a gap in our understanding and representation of non-perennial systems. To adapt to future challenges, there is a need to determine what modeled representations of low- and no-flow in non-perennial rivers and streams do well and where uncertainties may lie in the internal representations of hydrologic processes. Here we...

Large wood (LW) entrainment and transport observations of naturally occurring wood in rivers are critical for understanding wood dynamics. However, they remain limited and sparse, primarily originating from single-site studies. As a result, broader spatial or temporal variability of wood dynamics may not be adequately captured. We compiled a database of tracked, natural pieces of wood from 11 low-order and relatively steep streams in the Chilean Andes, Swiss Alps, United Kingdom and United States. From decades to single-year studies, we gathered 59,739 observations of tracked wood, which...

Reforestation practices have potential to alter site productivity and influence forest stand development. We evaluated the effects of logging debris (LD) manipulation (LD dispersed, LD piled, and LD removed) and competing vegetation control (VC; initial VC only or annual VC for five years) on Douglas-fir stand characteristics at two sites in western Washington and Oregon, USA that contrasted strongly in soil quality (SQ). Annual VC had a pronounced effect on stand volume compared to initial VC, but the magnitude of effect was greater at the low SQ site (~50 % increase in volume) than at...

This indicator provides information on the population status of selected forest-associated species that are considered to reflect the genetic diversity present in forest ecosystems. Some forest species support or rely heavily on particular forest structures, patterns, associations, and processes and can therefore be used to describe the status of genetic diversity in forests as a whole.This indicator uses population trends of selected bird and tree species as a surrogate measure of genetic diversity. Population decreases, especially associated with small populations, can lead to decreases...