Treesearch

Field stations and marine labs (FSMLs) in the United States are predominantly white and often heteronormative and cis-gendered spaces. As such, it can be difficult for people of color and other minoritized groups to gain access, persist, and succeed as field scientists-in- training. While making large-scale changes in how our FSMLs look and operate can seem daunting, many FSMLs are working on DEAI (diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion) initiatives through their undergraduate student programs. We give examples from some of these efforts, and we suggest some concrete, achievable...

Recent debates around the meaning and implications of compassionate conservation suggest that some conservationists consider emotion a false and misleading basis for moral judgment and decision making. We trace these beliefs to a long-standing, gendered sociocultural convention and argue that the disparagement of emotion as a source of moral understanding is both empirically and morally problematic. According to the current scientific and philosophical understanding, reason and emotion are better understood as partners, rather than opposites. Nonetheless, the two have historically been...

When axioms (i.e., important yet assumed beliefs or principles) come to be accepted as authoritative and incontrovertible truths, they can become dogma. In conservation science, the belief that “conservation is engaged in the protection of the integrity and continuity of natural processes, not the welfare of individuals” (Soulé 1985) has come to be accepted somewhat dogmatically; so, too, has the practice of excluding non-native species in biodiversity calculations. Although proponents of this practice often refer to Soulé (1985) as justification, in a later work Soulé (1990) claims the...

Humans affect ecosystems in many ways, and scientific field studies are no exception. If data collection disrupts environments or biota too much, it can lead to inaccurate conclusions in the study of interest or in subsequent studies. We evaluated whether stream electrofishing surveys could measurably disturb the benthic biofilms in two forested headwaters in western Oregon, USA. While the consequences of electrofishing to macroinvertebrates and fish have been assessed, to date no studies have quantified its influence on benthic biofilms. We observed declines in the standing stocks of...

Protecting existing soil carbon (C) and harnessing the C sequestration potential of soils require an improved understanding of the processes through which soil organic matter accumulates in natural systems. Currently, competing hypotheses exist regarding the dominant mechanisms for soil C stabilization. Many long-standing hypotheses revolve around an assumed positive relationship between the quantity of organic inputs and soil C accumulation, while more recent hypotheses have shifted attention toward the complex controls of microbial processing and organo-mineral complexation. Here, we...

Traditional methods to measure body lengths of aquatic vertebrates rely on anes-thetics, and extended handling times. These procedures can increase stress, po-tentially affecting the animal's welfare after its release. We developed a simple procedure using digital images to estimate body lengths of coastal cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii clarkii) and larval coastal giant salamander (Dicamptodon ten-ebrosus). Images were postprocessed using ImageJ2. We measured more than 900 individuals of these two species from 200 pool habitats along 9.6 river kilometers. The percent error (mean ±...

Landscape changes can alter pollinator movement and foraging patterns which can in turn influence the demographic processes of plant populations. We leveraged social network models and four fixed arrays of five hummingbird feeders equipped with radio frequency identification (RFID) data loggers to study rufous hummingbird (Selasphorus rufus) foraging patterns in a heterogeneous landscape. Using a space-for-time approach, we asked whether forest encroachment on alpine meadows could restrict hummingbird foraging movements and impede resource discovery. We fit social network models to data on...

A comprehensive cross-biome assessment of major nitrogen (N) species that includes dissolved organic N (DON) is central to understanding interactions between inorganic nutrients and organic matter in running waters. Here, we synthesize stream water N chemistry across biomes and find that the composition of the dissolved N pool shifts from highly heterogeneous to primarily comprised of inorganic N, in tandem with dissolved organic matter (DOM) becoming more N-rich, in response to nutrient enrichment from human disturbances. We identify two critical thresholds of total dissolved N (TDN)...

Long-term watershed experiments provide the opportunity to understand forest hydrology responses to past logging, road construction, forest regrowth, and their interactions with climate and geomorphic processes such as road-related landslides. We examined a 50-year record from paired-watershed experiments in the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, Oregon, USA in which 125 to 450-year-old conifer forests were harvested in the 1960s and 1970s and converted to planted conifer forests. We evaluated how quickflow and delayed flow for 1222 events in treated and reference watersheds changed by...

Surface topography can influence flow pathways and the location of runoff source areas and water transport in steep headwater catchments. However, the influence of topography on spatial patterns of residual soil moisture is less well understood. We measured soil volumetric water content (VWC) on 14 dates at 0–30 and 30–60 cm depth at 54 sites on a steep, 10 ha north-facing forested slope in the west-central Cascades Mountains of Oregon, USA. Spatial patterns in VWC were persistent over time, and contrary to expectations VWC at 30–60 cm depth was greater on divergent than convergent slopes,...