Treesearch

Before the arrival of white-nose syndrome in North America, the northern long-eared bat (Myotis septentrionalis) was a common cavity-roosting bat species in central Appalachian hardwood forests. Two successive prescribed burns on the Fernow Experimental Forest, West Virginia, in 2008 and 2009, were shown to positively affect maternity colony day-roost availability and condition in the near-term. However, whether immediate benefits were temporary and if burned forests actually experienced an accelerated loss of trees and snags possibly suitable for bats more than background loss in unburned...

This report reviews existing research and datasets from 17 U.S. Forest Service-affiliated experimental forests and ranges (EFRs) that are relevant to science needs of state and federal water quality regulatory agencies. A focus group of regulatory personnel chose “biological responses to stream nutrients” as the focus for this synthesis, and identified a broader array of science topics that could be of regulatory interest. Additional research needs of regulators that could potentially be filled by future studies at these sites were identified as (1) the composition of biotic communities...

Evaluation of long-term studies provides information about the sustainability of forest management on a time scale valuable to forest managers. A long-term silvicultural study at the Argonne Experimental Forest in northern Wisconsin has been continuously maintained for over six decades, providing an opportunity to test differences in growth and yield between three partial cutting methods: single-tree selection, crop tree release, and diameterlimit cutting. Over 65 years, results showed that single-tree selection with low residual stocking (14 m2 ha-1 basal area) performed best in regard to...

The Adaptive Silviculture for Climate Change (ASCC) project was developed to test ecosystem-specific adaptation approaches. The first ASCC trial was installed on the Cutfoot Experimental Forest (CEF) in northern Minnesota, USA, in 2014. Three adaptation treatments (resistance, resilience, and transition), along with a no action control, were tested and compared using Forest Vegetation Simulator to determine their relative success. We compared mean annual increment (MAI) and mortality and determined how well each treatment achieved its species composition and stand structure targets. MAI...

Throughout much of its range, northern white-cedar (Thuja occidentalis L., hereafter cedar) has experienced a bottleneck in recruitment: cedar seedlings are often abundant in these stands, particularly in lowland settings, yet cedar sapling densities are quite low, leading to concerns that cedar canopy trees are not being replaced. Several barriers to cedar recruitment have been suggested; however, findings from previous studies have been inconsistent with regard to limiting factors. Our objective was to characterize the microsite conditions associated with the establishment of cedar...

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....

This chapter is a review and synthesis of research conducted at the Caspar Creek Experimental Watersheds (CCEW) on stream nutrients and their responses to forest management. Results from relevant scientific studies conducted at CCEW are provided, as well as a description of future potential research. This information is relevant to water quality regulatory agencies.

This chapter is a review and synthesis of research conducted at Fernow Experimental Forest (FER) on stream nutrients and biological responses. It is intended to inform national and regional water quality regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, West Virginia Division of Forestry, and West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (WVDNR), about existing results of relevant scientific studies that are available at FER, and to identify future field and synthetic research of potential use to regulatory agencies that might be conducted at FER.

Decades of atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition in the northeastern USA have enhanced this globally important forest carbon (C) sink by relieving N limitation. While many N fertilization experiments found increased forest C storage, the mechanisms driving this response at the ecosystem scale remain uncertain. Following the optimal allocation theory, augmented N availability may reduce belowground C investment by trees to roots and soil symbionts. To test this prediction and its implications on soil biogeochemistry, we constructed C and N budgets for a long-term, whole-watershed N fertilizati...