Treesearch

Wildfire risks and losses have increased over the last 100 years, associated with population expansion, land use and management practices, and global climate change. While there have been extensive efforts at modeling the probability and severity of wildfires, there have been fewer efforts to examine causal linkages from wildfires to impacts on ecological receptors and critical habitats. Bayesian networks are probabilistic tools for graphing and evaluating causal knowledge and uncertainties in complex systems that have seen only limited application to the quantitative assessment of...

Citizen science, also known as participatory research, combines the efforts of professional researchers and community volunteers to collect data. We have established one such collaborative project in eastern North Carolina, near the 79,000-acre Hofmann Forest, called the Hofmann Open-Water Laboratory (HOWL) citizen science project. The White Oak River, New River, and Trent River all flow out of the Hofmann. The Hofmann is an ecological keystone in the region, acting as a natural filtration system for harmful runoff that occurs in the coastal plain of North Carolina. Our purposes for this...

We describe the rationale and framework for developing scenarios of positive urban futures. The scenario framework is conducted in participatory workshop settings and composed of three distinct scenario approaches that are used to (1) explore potential outcomes of existing planning goals (strategic scenarios), (2) articulate visions that address pressing resilience challenges (adaptive scenarios), and (3) envision radical departures from the status quo in the pursuit of sustainability and equity (transformative scenarios). A series of creative and analytical processes are used to engage...

Hurricane Maria, a Category 4 storm, snapped and uprooted canopy trees, removed large branches, and defoliated vegetation across Puerto Rico. The magnitude of forest damages and the rates and mechanisms of forest recovery following Maria provide important benchmarks for understanding the ecology of extreme events. We used airborne Lidar data acquired before (2017) and after Maria (2018, 2020) to quantify landscape-scale changes in forest structure along a 439-ha elevational gradient (100-800 m) in the Luquillo Experimental Forest. Damages from Maria were widespread, with 73% of the study...

A fundamental systems approach is essential to advancing our understanding of how to address critical challenges caused by the intersection of urbanization and climate change. The social-ecological-technological systems (SETS) conceptual framework brings forward a systems perspective that considers the reality of cities as complex systems and provides a baseline for developing a science of, and practice for, cities. Given the urgency of issues we collectively face to improve livability, justice, sustainability, and resilience in cities, bringing a systems approach to resilience planning...

Anticipatory thinking is a critical component in urban planning practices and knowledge systems in an era of unpredictability and conflicting expectations of the future. This chapter introduces "anticipatory resilience" as a futures-oriented knowledge system that intentionally addresses uncertain climate conditions and explores alternative, desirable future states. It suggests a portfolio of tools suitable for building long-term foresight capacity in urban planning. Examples of knowledge systems interventions are presented to explore the trade-offs, constraints, possibilities, and desires...

Recent wildland fire disasters have attracted interest from a variety of disciplines seeking to reduce impacts of fire on people and natural resources. Architecture, insurance and reinsurance, city and county government, and engineering sectors have contributed ideas to mitigate or avoid damage during wildland fires. This paper examines the modern wildland fire system in terms of the historical context for wildland fire, primarily in the US, and discusses some of the characteristics of this system and its human culture that affect the potential impact of innovations and engineering...

Background: Proteins with nucleotide binding site (NBS) and leucine-rich repeat (LRR) domains (NLR) make up one of most important resistance (R) families for plants to resist attacks from various pathogens and pests. The available transcriptomes of limber pine (Pinus flexilis) allow us to characterize NLR genes and related resistance gene analogs (RGAs) in host resistance against Cronartium ribicola, the causal fungal pathogen of white pine blister rust (WPBR) on five-needle pines throughout the world. We previously mapped a limber pine major gene locus (Cr4) that confers complete resistanc...

Fungal and mite associates may drive changes in bark beetle populations, and mechanisms constraining beetle irruptions may be hidden in endemic populations. We characterized common fungi of endemic-level Jeffrey pine beetle (JPB) in western USA and analyzed their dissemination by JPB (maxillae and fecal pellet) and fungivorous mites to identify if endogenous regulation drove the population. We hypothesized that: (1) as in near-endemic mountain pine beetle populations, JPB’s mutualistic fungus would either be less abundant in endemic than in non-endemic populations or that another fungus...

For over 20 years, forest fuel reduction has been the dominant management action in western US forests. These same actions have also been associated with the restoration of highly altered frequent-fire forests. Perhaps the vital element in the compatibility of these treatments is that both need to incorporate the salient characteristics that frequent fire produced - variability in vegetation structure and composition across landscapes and the inability to support large patches of high-severity fire. These characteristics can be achieved with both fire and mechanical treatments. The...