Treesearch

Climate change and associated disturbances are expected to exacerbate forest root diseases because of altered distributions of existing and emerging forest pathogens and predisposition of trees due to climatic maladaptation and other disturbances. Predictions of suitable climate space (potential geographic distribution) for forest pathogens and host trees under contemporary and future climate scenarios will guide the selection of appropriate management practices by forest managers to minimize adverse impacts of forest disease within forest ecosystems. A native pathogen (Armillaria solidipes...

The eastern red bat (Lasiurus borealis Müller, 1776) is a widespread species that roosts in evergreen or dead foliage suspended in trees during winter but retreats to leaf litter during colder periods. Roosting in leaf litter by eastern red bats makes them vulnerable to prescribed fires in winter. Using radio telemetry, we tracked 33 male eastern red bats to 101 winter (November–February) roosts and quantified roost locations, habitat surrounding roosts, and landscape attributes of roost locations. When roosting in trees, bats preferred oaks but generally avoided other tree species; they...

Between 1989 and 2012, three Forest Service programs collected more than 8,300 surveys of epiphytic lichen communities, providing a baseline for tracking lichen responses to air quality, climate, and other changes on forest land in the United States. This national atlas of lichen species combines these datasets into distribution maps for more than 400 taxa and 6,000 forested locations across the country. All 115,500 lichen records presented in the maps link to voucher specimens, most of which can be accessed from herbaria. Unlike mapped herbarium records, most surveys were collected on a...

A description of major biotic and abiotic features within the North Fork Hunter Creek and Hunter Creek Bog areas of critical environmental concern in southwestern Oregon. Extensive lists of vascular plants, fungi, lichens, bryophytes, and wildlife species known or likely to occur are provided in appendices. This guidebook is part of a continuing series of guidebooks on federal research natural areas that began in 1972.

Forests in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade Range are being stressed by a number of factors that put them at risk. High-severity wildfire, drought stress, insect outbreaks, disease, and a backdrop of changing climate all pose a threat to the persistence of these forests. These factors can work individually or combine to magnify the impacts on forests. For example, the 2012–2016 drought led to tree stress that increased susceptibility to bark beetles. However, there are land management options that can help landowners increase forest health. A significant portion of Sierra Nevada and...

Several species of aggressive bark beetle in the genus Dendroctonus (Coleoptera: Curculionidae)undergo large fluctuations in population density with distinct outbreak and non-outbreak phases.We investigated attributes we hypothesized as subject to density-dependent variation (in particular, thoselikely to express phenotypic plasticity) in the southern pine beetle (SPB), Dendroctonus frontalis, as possibleindicators of population fluctuations. These traits were morphology (body size and hindwing shape) andthe sex ratio of trap-captured, dispersing SPB populations. We compared attributes of...

To reduce maladaptation in cultivated seed lots, seed transfer zones (STZs) have been developed for grasslands and other habitats using morphological traits and phenological measurements that only capture the first day of events such as flowering and seed ripening. Phenology is closely linked to plant fitness and may affect genetic loss during harvests of seed raised for ecological restoration. Here, we measured the detailed phenologies of 27 populations from six STZs of bluebunch wheatgrass (Pseudoroegneria spicata) (Pursh) Á. Love (Poaceae) raised in a common garden to test whether...

This Minireview provides a comprehensive discussion on the potential of using acid hydrotropes for sustainably fractionating lignocelluloses for biorefinery applications. Acid hydrotropes are a class of acids that have hydrotrope properties toward lignin, which helps to solubilize lignin in aqueous systems. With the capability of cleaving ether and ester bonds and even lignin-carbohydrate complex (LCC) linkages, these acid hydrotropes can therefore isolate lignin embedded in the plant biomass cell wall and subsequently solubilize the isolated lignin in aqueous systems. Performances of two...

Tree-ring time series provide long-term, annually resolved information on the growth of trees. When sampled in a systematic context, tree-ring data can be scaled to estimate the forest carbon capture and storage of landscapes, biomes, and - ultimately - the globe. A systematic effort to sample tree rings in national forest inventories would yield unprecedented temporal and spatial resolution of forest carbon dynamics and help resolve key scientific uncertainties, which we highlight in terms of evidence for forest greening (enhanced growth) versus browning (reduced growth, increased...

The incorporation of fibers into polymers is a well-known route for realizing composite materials with improved strength, stiffness, and toughness. Cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) are a promising reinforcement because of their high aspect ratio, high specific stiffness and specific strength, and transparency and the fact that they are derived from renewable and sustainable sources. Here, we demonstrate the application of CNFs for the reinforcement of continuous polymer fibers (filaments) to achieve a concurrent enhancement of strength, stiffness, and fracture toughness. Poly(methyl methacrylat...