Treesearch

We assessed natural regeneration of longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) using the data collected from the Escambia Experimental Forest in southern Alabama. Fifteen years after the regeneration control, natural regeneration of longleaf pine remained patchy across a wide range of site and stand conditions; slightly more than half of all plots contained regeneration, but the density of seedlings and saplings varied significantly. The abundance of seedlings ≤1-year-old was positively related to stand age and time since last fire, but negatively related to overstory basal area. The abundance...

Large high-severity fires are increasing in frequency in many parts of the world, including the coniferous forests of the Sierra Nevada mountains. These “megafires” alter vegetation and environmental conditions in forests, yet their impacts on native wildlife remain poorly understood. Bats play an important role in forest ecosystems, but their responses to megafires likewise are understudied. We investigated bat responses to the King Fire, a megafire that burned nearly 40,000 ha within the Eldorado National Forest in 2014, half of it at high severity. From June to September 2017, we used...

Experimental forests and ranges (EFRs) are a network of long-term, dedicated research sites that have been established nationwide by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service (USFS), and include several collaborating research sites managed by other federal and state land management agencies (Adams et al. 2008, Lugo et al. 2006). Most were originally established to investigate the environmental effects of forest management practices, but, over time, many have become venues for long-term environmental monitoring and for investigations of fundamental ecological processes in these...

Avec la demande grandissante pour une diversité de produits et services issus de la forêt et l’incertitude liée aux changements climatiques, les peuplements mixtes ont de plus en plus la cote. Maintenir le caractère mixte de ces peuplements constitue toutefois un réel défi. Un groupe d’experts nord-américains a examiné les caractéristiques de cinq grands types de peuplements mixtes en forêt tempérée6. Ils ont découvert que tous ces grands types comportaient au moins une espèce de conifère difficile à régénérer, et que cela constituait le principal obstacle au maintien de la composition...

Shou sugi ban, also known as yakisugi, or just sugi ban, is an aesthetic wood surface treatment that involves charring the surface of dimensional lumber, such as exterior cladding. The goal of this research is to examine the effect of shou sugi ban on the flammability and decay resistance of wood. Several species and variants of commercially available sugi ban were tested. The flammability was examined from the heat release rate curves using the oxygen consumption method and cone calorimeter. Durability was examined with a soil block assay for one white-rot fungus and one brown-rot fungus....

Widespread Phytophthorainfections have been discovered in nursery stock used in California restoration plantings. In response, Nursery PhytophthoraBest Management Practices (NPBMPs) designed to exclude Phytophthorafrom nursery plants were developed to address the need for clean planting stock in restoration projects. A pilot program to implement the systematic use of the NPBMPs, Accreditation to Improve Restoration (AIR), was developed and started in 2018. As of 2020, 13 northern California restoration nurseries have been evaluated, and five have met all the program requirements. In 564...

Fine-resolution satellite imagery is needed for characterizing dry-season phenology in tropical forests since many tropical forests are very spatially heterogeneous due to their diverse species and environmental background. However, fine-resolution satellite imagery, such as Landsat, has a 16-day revisit cycle that makes it hard to obtain a high-quality vegetation index time series due to persistent clouds in tropical regions. To solve this challenge, this study explored the feasibility of employing a series of advanced technologies for reconstructing a high-quality Landsat time series...

Feedbacks within ecosystems can lead to internal reinforcement of the current state providing ecosystem resilience. Often, multiple biotic interactions across trophic levels play a role in such feedbacks, yet these are generally studied independently, obscuring the relative importance of interactions among different factors. We look at various potential feedbacks in intact and degraded mesic forests on Hawaiʻi Island where managers have planted native Acacia koa (koa) trees in an attempt to jumpstart succession in former cattle pastures. These restoration forests, however, have not...

Great Basin bristlecone pine (Pinus longaeva D.K. Bailey) is a long-lived subalpine conifer native to the western United States. Bristlecone pine is considered a keystone species of high-elevation Great Basin sky island forests, yet detailed distribution data and information about constraining environmental factors for the species are lacking. We compiled a distribution dataset consisting of 490 individual bristlecone pine forest stands covering nearly 100,000 ha in Utah, Nevada, and California to enable improved monitoring of the species and enhanced understanding of forest succession...