Treesearch

Forest sustainability is explicitly tied to soil health, which has been defined as "the capacity of a soil to function within ecosystem boundaries to sustain biological productivity, maintain environmental quality, and promote plant and animal health" (Doran et al., 1996; Sigua, 2018). This definition includes the ability of soil to function effectively as a component of healthy forests (Schoenholtz et al., 2000) and is linked to the soils ability to support physical, chemical, and biological properties while also suppressing plant pathogens (van Bruggen and Semenov, 2000). In broad terms,...

Post-fire hydrologic research typically focuses on the first few years after a wildfire, leading to substantial uncertainty regarding the longevity of impacts. The time needed for hydrologic function to return to pre-fire conditions is critical information for post-fire land and water management decisions. This is particularly true in Mediterranean climates, where water is scarce and in high demand, and the severity and area burned by wildfires are increasing. In part, uncertainty about hydrologic recovery is due to lack of a consistent definition or interpretation of what constitutes...

Tricolored bats (Perimyotis subflavus) that roost in subterranean hibernacula have experienced precipitous declines from white-nose syndrome (WNS); however, understudied populations also use during winter non-subterranean roosts such as tree cavities, bridges, and foliage. Our objectives were to determine winter roost use by tricolored bats in an area devoid of subterranean roosts, determine roost microclimates to relate them to growth requirements of the fungal causal agent of WNS, and determine habitat factors influencing winter tree selection. From November to March 2017–2019, we used...

Fire suppression in the western United States has significantly altered forest composition and structure, resulting in a higher risk of stand-replacing fire, large-scale drought mortality, and bark beetle outbreaks. Mechanical thinning and prescribed fire are common treatments designed to reduce high-severity fire risk, but few studies have tracked long-term understory plant community response to these treatments with repeated fire application that emulates historic fire regimes. We evaluate changes in understory plant diversity and composition, as well as light availability, soil moisture,...

Measuring wildland fuels is at the core of fire science, but many established field methods are not useful for ecosystems characterized by complex surface vegetation. A recently developed submeter 3D method applied to southeastern U.S. longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) communities captures critical heterogeneity, but similar to any destructive sampling measurement, it relies on separate plots for calculating loading and consumption. In this study, we investigated how bulk density differed by 10-cm height increments among three dominant fuel types, tested predictions of consumption based on...

By filtering the incoming climate signal when producing streamflow, river basins can attenuate—or amplify—projected increases in rainfall variability. A common perception is that river systems dampen rainfall variability by averaging spatial and temporal variations in their watersheds. However, by analyzing 671 watersheds throughout the United States, we find that many catchments actually amplify the coefficient of variation of rainfall, and that these catchments also likely amplify changesin rainfall variability. Based on catchment-scale water balance principles, we relate that faculty to...

Urban resilience has gained considerable popularity in planning and policy to address cities’ capacity to cope with climate change. While many studies discuss the different ways that academics define resilience, little attention has been given to how resilience is conceptualized across different urban contexts and among the actors that engage in building resilience ‘on the ground’. Given the implications that resilience frames can have for the solutions that are pursued (and who benefits from them), it is important to examine how transformative definitions of urban resilience are in...

Resilient urban futures provides a social–ecological–technological systems (SETS) perspective on promoting and understanding resilience. This chapter introduces the concepts, research, and practice of urban resilience from the Urban Resilience to Extremes Sustainability Research Network (UREx SRN). It describes conceptual and methodological approaches to address how cities experience extreme weather events, adapt to climate resilience challenges, and can transform toward sustainable and equitable futures.

Tropical forests are expected to experience unprecedented warming and increases in hurricane disturbances in the coming decades; yet, our understanding of how these productive systems, especially their belowground component, will respond to the combined effects of varied environmental changes remains empirically limited. Here we evaluated the responses of root dynamics (production, mortality, and biomass) to soil and understory warming (+4 °C) and after two consecutive tropical hurricanes in our in situwarming experiment in a tropical forest of Puerto Rico: Tropical Responses to Altered...