Treesearch

Fire influences soils, but it is difficult to attribute long-term changes in soils to fire, given the short duration, and irregular return interval of most fires. Prescribed fire, in which landscapes are intentionally burned, offer some experimental control, but study sites where prescribed fire has been applied systematically over decades are rare. We had the opportunity to investigate the effects of prescribed fire on soil horizon thickness in Spodosols from a long-term study in northern Florida, USA, in which three prescribed fire frequency treatments (1, 2, or 4 years) and an unburned...

Objectives: We examined whether greenspace measures (overall percent greenspace and forest, and number of greenspace types) were associated with clinically adjudicated dementia status. Methods: In a sample of non-demented older adults (n = 2141, average age = 75.3 years) from the Cardiovascular Health and Cognition Study, Cox proportional hazard and logistic regression analyses were used to estimate associations of baseline greenspace with risks of incident dementia and MCI, respectively, while adjusting for demographics, co-morbidities, and other neighborhood factors. We derived quartiles...

The dendroecology of larch (Larix gmelinii Rupr.) in the world's northernmost forest provided insight into the complex relationship of tree growth, forest stand establishment, and changing eco-climatic factors. The Ary-Mas forest in the northern Siberia (72° + NL) is an ecological island, surrounded by tundra. We hypothesized that the environmental constraints that limit larch growth in this harsh habitat include soil moisture and winter winds as well as low air temperature. We constructed and analyzed the larch growth index (GI) chronology from the eighteenth century until 2019. We found...

Inter-basin water transfer (IBT) is widely used to mitigate water stress by diverting water from a relatively water-rich region. However, it is unclear how the IBTs’ role evolves with the dynamic hydroclimatic and socioeconomic circumstances. Here, we propose a new Stress Relief Index and an integrated water stress simulation framework to quantify the efficiency of 50 active IBTs across the conterminous United States in alleviating regional water stress. The IBTs vastly reduced the coverage of highly stressed area (8.7 × 104km2) and population (4.3 million people) during 1986–2015. The...

Studies of skidder productivity typically involve a range of conditions that support specific study objectives related to harvest system, terrain, forest attribute, or other aspects of the harvest. Skidder production models often fit the data well because cycle time and productivity are strongly related to load size and skid distance. Changes in skidder design over time have increased load capacity, potential machine speed, and operator comfort. Since the harvest system often limits the observed range in speed and load size, the tradeoffs between those factors have not been a primary focus...

Species richness within a site (i.e., alpha diversity) and between sites (i.e., beta diversity) are important measurements of biodiversity utilized in wildlife research and management. However, novel occupancy modeling approaches, especially at large spatial scales and in conjunction with other analyses of biodiversity, remain scarce in studies of mammalian biodiversity across forested landscapes. We assessed alpha and beta diversity of mammals across a 16,058-km2 region of southern Illinois, USA, between January and April of the years 2008–2010. We deployed camera traps, measured habitat...

Field studies of hyporheic exchange in mountain systems are often conducted using short study reaches and a limited number of observations. It is common practice to assume these study reaches represent hyporheic exchange at larger scales or different sites and to infer general relationships among potential causal mechanisms from the limited number of observations. However, these assumptions of representativeness are rarely tested. In this study, we develop numerical models from four segments of mountain streams in different geomorphologic settings and extract shorter reaches to test how...

In 2016, mixed-severity wildfires in the southern Appalachians created a gradient of forest structures not typical following prescribed burns, providing a unique opportunity to study temporally dynamic conditions and breeding bird response. We measured forest structure and breeding bird communities across a fire-severity gradient in 3 burned and 3 unburned watersheds for 5 years (Y1-Y5). We categorized plots as unburned (NB), low- (L), moderate- (M), or high-severity (H) using a composite fire-severity index. Tree mortality increased with fire-severity category (FSC) and over time; by Y5,...

Demands for water services from forested watersheds have dramatically increased since the 1950s and the trend continues as global environmental change intensifies in the 21st century. The goal of this study is to provide an overview of existing hydrological modeling tools that can be used in watershed management in a forest environment, offer guidance of model uses, and identify knowledge gaps in model development and applications. We classify 47 selected hydrological models according to their development purposes, theories, functionalities, and potentials to be applied in Decision Support...

United States Department of Defense munitions wood packaging materials (WPMs) are currently dip-treated with preservatives to protect the wood against decay fungi and termites. However, recent observations of mold on WPMs prompted research to evaluate the effectiveness of adding moldicides to the wood preservatives that are typically used on WPMs. Controlling moisture is the most effective way to prevent mold growth, but this is not always possible during WPM handling and storage. For this study, moldicides were selected based on compatibility with existing wood preservatives, commercial...