Treesearch

Phosphorus (P) is an essential nutrient for all forms of life but its over-enrichment can result in eutrophication of surface waters. For many watersheds around the world, some seasonal total P (TP) load datasets may exist but the continuous and multi-year daily TP concentrations and/or load datasets are not available due to the lacks of in situ P sensor measurement, time-consuming, and budget constraint. Traditionally, the seasonal TP loads are normally obtained with measuring daily TP concentrations for a couple of times within a season in a watershed, and then these daily TP concentratio...

Terrestrial invasive species threaten the integrity of diverse and highly-valued ecosystems. The Minnesota Invasive Terrestrial Plants and Pests Center (MITPPC) was established by the state of Minnesota to fund research projects aimed at minimizing harms posed by the most threatening terrestrial invasive species to the state's prairies, wetlands, forests, and agriculture. MITPPC used the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to identify and prioritize diverse invasive species threats. We describe how MITPPC tailored AHP to establish its research priorities and highlight major outcomes and...

Aim: Ecological relationships between species richness and biomass production are increasingly thought to be pervasive across the globe. Yet, diversity production relationships have not been explored extensively for freshwater fish communities even though fisheries production provides key services to humans. Our aim was to evaluate the diversity production relationship of fish communities inhabiting freshwater streams across the Appalachian Mountain range and examine how diversity-production relationships varied across streams possessing different thermal signatures. Location: Our study...

Alien arthropods threaten human health, jeopardize food supplies, endanger valued species, risk economic losses, and disrupt ecosystem functions, at least some of the time. The accelerating pace of commercial and social globalization creates unprecedented opportunities for the movement of species to new areas of the world. As arthropods are dispersed beyond their native ranges, they escape population-regulating predators, parasitoids, and pathogens and encounter naïve host plants and animals. In principle, the disruption of coevolutionary, antagonistic interactions presents an invading...

In 2017, a moisture monitoring study was initiated on an eight-story, mass timber building located in Portland, Oregon. A detailed description of the monitoring program and initial monitoring results from the first year of the program were published previously. It was discovered that by the end of Year 1, some of the mass timber components had not dried below 19% moisture content (MC). This technical note is a follow-up to the original paper to examine how the building changed over its first 3 years after construction. All of the locations monitored over 3 years have reached stable...

Soil and whole plant samples were collected from two natural populations of Appalachian black cohosh (Actaea racemose L.) to assess soil-plant-microbe interactions and determine seasonal mineral acquisition by the species. A. racemosa is one among medicinal forest plants subject to excessive harvesting, and there is increasing concern over the sustainability of natural populations. Following standard procedures, mineral content and chemistry of soils sampled from the two sites were determined, and monthly (May to August) A. racemosa root, stem, and leaf mineral content were analyzed. Fresh...

Forest management planning requires the specification of measurable objectives as desired future conditions at spatial extents ranging from stands to landscapes and temporal extents ranging from a single growing season to several centuries. Effective implementation of forest management requires understanding current conditions and constraints well enough to apply the appropriate silvicultural strategies to produce desired future conditions, often for multiple objectives, at varying spatial and temporal extents. We administered an online survey to forest managers in the eastern US to better...

Atmospheric turbulent circulations in the vicinity of wildland fire fronts play an important role in the transfer of momentum into and out of combustion zones, which in turn can potentially affect the behavior and spread of wildland fires. The vertical turbulent transfer of momentum is accomplished via individual sweep, ejection, outward interaction, and inward interaction events, collectively known as sweep-ejection dynamics. This study examined the sweep-ejection dynamics that occurred before, during, and after the passage of a surface fire front during a prescribed fire experiment...

Conservation auctions have been advocated as a way to increase the cost-effectiveness of payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs by reducing the informational rents captured by participating landowners. Most PES programs have continual or periodic (rather than one-time) enrollment. In repeated auctions, it is possible for participants to learn the winning bids from previous auctions and use this information to strategically set their bids, thereby capturing more informational rents. We develop an agent-based model, using data from Costa Rica’s Pago de Servicios Ambientales (PSA)...