Treesearch

Expanding the global protected area network is critical for addressing biodiversity declines and the climate crisis. However, how climate change will affect ecosystem representation within the protected area network remains unclear. Here we use spatial climate analogs to examine potential climate-driven shifts in terrestrial ecoregions and biomes under a +2 °C warming scenario and associated implications for achieving 30% area-based protection targets. We find that roughly half of land area will experience climate conditions that correspond with different ecoregions and nearly a quarter...

The cause of recent wildfire catastrophes can be traced to multiple factors, including the expanding urban footprint (Radeloff et al. 2018), human ignitions (Nagy et al. 2018), droughts (Littell et al. 2016) and high-wind events (Abatzoglou et al. 2018). In 2018, over 58,000 wildfires burned 8.8 million acres in the western U.S. (NIFC 2018). As wildfire frequency and intensity increase (Westerling 2016, Abatzoglou et al. 2017), understanding the impacts of high-severity wildfire on ecosystem function is critical, particularly the negative effects on soils (Certini 2005) and drinking water...

Sirex noctilio is a Eurasian species in the woodwasp (Siricidae) insect family, a small and poorly understood group of insects. Several siricid species have invaded various world regions due to their frequent presence in wood moving in international trade. Like most other woodwasps, feeding by S. noctilio occurs in weakened or dying pines in its native range, and populations exist there at relatively low levels. But in non-native regions of the Southern Hemisphere, S. noctilio populations have thrived, colonizing hosts in plantations of non-native pines planted at high densities. Under...

The effects of forest management on native fauna are of key interest to managers and conservationists. Individual studies have expanded our knowledge of management impacts, but meta-analyses of multiple studies are needed to summarize and integrate findings into a more generalizable form. Most meta-analyses on the effects of tree harvesting have focused on mature forest taxa because of concerns for these species; however, early-successional specialists, such as shrubland birds in the eastern United States, are also of key conservation concern. Using data from 34 studies that examined the...

Headwater forest ecosystems of the western USA generate a large portion of the dissolved organic matter (DOM) transported in streams across North America. Land cover changes that alter forest structure and species composition affect the quantity and composition of DOM transferred to aquatic ecosystems. Clear-cut harvesting affects ~1% of the forest area of North America annually, leaving most western forests in varying stages of regrowth and the total area of old-growth forest is decreasing. The consequences of this widespread management practice on watershed carbon cycling remain unknown....

In recent years wildland fires in the United States have had significant impacts on local and regional air quality and negative human health outcomes. Although the primary health concerns from wildland fires come from fine particulate matter (PM2:5), large increases in ozone (O3) have been observed downwind of wildland fire plumes (DeBell et al., 2004; Bytnerowicz et al., 2010; Preisler et al., 2010; Jaffe et al., 2012; Bytnerowicz et al., 2013; Jaffe et al., 2013; Lu et al., 2016; Lindaas et al., 2017; McClure and Jaffe, 2018; Liu et al., 2018; Baylon et al., 2018; Buysse et al., 2019)....

This is 1 of 23 guides to help Southeastern U.S. producers of economically important agricultural commodities build resilience to, prepare for, and recover from hurricane impacts. All guides can be found on the USDA Southeast Climate Hub Hurricane Preparation and Recovery Commodity Guides website.

Oceanographic features such as currents, waves, temperature and salinity, together with life history traits, control patterns and rates of gene flow and contribute to shaping the population genetic structure of marine organisms. Seascape genetics is an emerging discipline that adopts a spatially explicit approach to examine biotic and abiotic factors that drive gene flow in marine environments. In this study, we examined factors that contribute to genetic differentiation in two coastal Mediterranean gastropods whose geographical ranges overlap but which inhabit different environments. The...

Climate refugia management is an emerging natural resource sub-discipline but identifying which species would benefit, their climatic requirements, and where both species and suitable conditions are located remains problematic. Land snails have species specific temperature needs and are one of the most imperiled groups of animals. The goal of our study was to 1) determine the distribution of land snails across a large 22,975 km2 study area in North America’s Pacific Northwest, 2) determine if microclimate, macroclimate, or non-microclimate variables influence species occurrence, and 3)...

Estimates of dead and down woody material (DWM) biomass are important for nutrient cycling, wildlife habitat assessment, fire effects and climate change science. Most methods used to sample woody material initially assess volume then estimates of wood density are used to convert volume to biomass. To assess initial wood density and decomposition rate, this study examined in situ wood density of lodgepole pine logs at the Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest (TCEF), central Montana, United States, 1, 11, and 22 years after felling. Mean wood density decreased from 0.39 to 0.27 g cm-3 over...