Treesearch

Forests are an essential component of the natural environment, as they support biodiversity, sequester carbon, and play a crucial role in biogeochemical cycles - in addition to producing organic matter that is necessary for the function of terrestrial organisms. Forests today are subject to threats ranging from natural occurrences, such as lightning-ignited fires, storms, and some forms of pollution, to those caused by human beings, such as land-use conversion (deforestation or intensive agriculture). In recent years, threats from pests and pathogens, particularly non-native species, have...

It is now well established that humans are the most powerful influence on the environment. The scale, pace and intensity of human activity is fundamentally altering earth’s climate system (IPCC, 2014) and driving global biodiversity and ecosystem decline (IPBES, 2019). Simultaneously, new forms and patterns of mobility are emerging and accelerating in a world driven by globalised market forces, new technologies, media transformations and related cultural trends of late modernity (Stokols, 2018; Boccagni, 2017; Cresswell, 1996). Indeed, during the final stages of preparing this volume we...

We opened this volume with sobering stories of the dire global challenges before us. Indeed, one would not be hard pressed to find stories of the urgency of our various environmental and social crises. While we wrote this book, the COVID-19 pandemic raged, towns in the Arctic reached unprecedented temperatures, countless hectares of forests fell while fossil fuels continued to be violently extracted from the earth, and Black, Indigenous and people of colour continued to be exploited and oppressed. Yet, despite all this, or rather because of it, we wish to begin our conclusion with hope and...

Current trajectories of global climate change call for a dramatic rethinking of the ways in which human communities navigate their relationships with each other and the natural world. In lieu of global mitigation efforts, communities, governments and other resource managers around the world are consequently being forced to adapt their livelihoods, values and practices to a rapidly changing climate. As scholars increasingly recognise, responding to the impact of dramatic changes across scales, landscapes and communities requires substantial collaboration, and many have identified ‘place’ as...

Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are created where a diverse array of microorganisms colonize the surface and upper few millimeters of the soil and create a consolidated crust. They were originally described from arid ecosystems where vascular vegetation is naturally sparse or absent. They have since been discovered in all terrestrial ecosystems. Where present, they perform a variety of important ecological functions, including the capture and accumulation of water and essential plant nutrients, and their release in forms useful to vascular plants. They also stabilize the soil surface against...

A tylenchid nematode parasite of a male long-legged fly, Tachytrechus sanus Osten Sacken (Diptera: Dolichopodidae) from Montana, USA is described as Parasitylenchus myiophagus n. sp. (Nematoda: Parasitylenchidae). The new species is characterized by the presence of an extremely long first generation female and numerous short and wide second generation males and females produced in “enclosed” clusters in the host’s body cavity. Both generation female nematodes are ovoviviparous, with short stylets lacking knobs and simple tails lacking spikes, palps or mucrons. The second generation males...

Plant phenological processes significantly impact ecosystem function and services across multiple ecological scales and are widely viewed to be among the most sensitive indicators of global environmental change. Remote sensing has crucially expanded our understanding of phenological variability. Yet, we continue to lack a complete mechanistic understanding of phenology and its variability and drivers, which is important to the development of predictive models, especially under continued environmental change. We combined field inventories and Land Surface Phenology (LSP) approaches, using...

Variations in both the behavior of wildlife and the scale at which the environment most influences the space use of wild animals (i.e., scale of effect) are critical, but often overlooked in habitat selection modeling. Ecologists have proposed that biological responses happening over longer time frames are influenced by environmental variables at larger spatial scales, but this has rarely been empirically tested. Here, we hypothesized that long-term patterns of behavior (i.e., lasting multiple weeks to months) would be associated with larger scales of effect than more sporadic behaviors....

The Marcell Experimental Forest (MEF) has a rich and long history of research focused on peatland hydrology and biogeochemistry (Kolka et al. 2011c). Research at MEF has encompassed atmospheric deposition chemistry, peatland nutrient cycling, mercury (Hg) cycling, soil properties, tree-stand dynamics, and climate change. Various watershed treatments have been applied to uplands, bogs, or fens to investigate impacts of management practices on water yield, peak streamflow, water quality, and nutrient processing (Kolka et al. 2011b, Verry et al. 2011a). Biogeochemical research at MEF has...

Element biogeochemistry in streams has a long record of study at Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest (HBEF) corresponding to the studies of watershed element cycling. Much of these studies focused on how streams control nutrient transport and storage. Although fewer HBEF studies have addressed how nutrients control stream processes than at some other experimental forests and ranges (EFRs) and long-term ecological research (LTER) sites (Benstead et al. 2009, Davis et al. 2010, Rosemond et al. 2015, Slavik et al. 2004), some studies at HBEF have addressed nutrient or cation enrichment (Hall et...