Treesearch

Invasive forest plants are a growing concern because of their perceived and actual negative ecological, economic, and social impacts. To effectively manage invasive plants in forest ecosystems, it is paramount to understand the management decisions made by family forest owners (FFOs), who collectively own 36% of forestlands in the United States. We contribute to the growing literature on invasive plant management and the factors that influence FFOs' likelihood to manage invasive plants on their property by incorporating protection motivation theory (PMT; Rogers 1975). Protection Motivation...

Catastrophic population declines due to disease often lead to fragmented remnant populations and loss of gene flow. Managers are left to determine appropriate conservation actions to recover and maintain population persistence. The recent utilization of genomic data to assist in species recovery now allows us to combine genome-wide surveys of differentiation and diversity with the identification of potentially adaptive regions to develop conservation plans that incorporate ecological and evolutionary processes. The unprecedented global decline of amphibian populations due to the pathogen...

While much is known about the impact of tree encroachment on flammability in degraded pine woodlands, little is known about how encroachment is impacting other important ecosystem functions. We investigated how the availability of seed from four encroaching tree species and the presence of a midstorey and litter layer affect seed predator selection. Additionally, we investigated how seed predators, the midstorey, overstorey basal area, substrate availability, and vegetation cover affect germination for a foundational species (Pinus palustris) compared to an encroaching species (Pinus...

Humans move species around the globe, both intentionally and unintentionally, and biological invasions have been accelerating for many species groups (Seebens et al. 2017). While most nonnative species (NNS) have little impact within their invaded habitat, many exhibit extraordinary population growth and adversely affect species with which they share no evolutionary history. NNS can also have significant negative economic impacts, estimated at $162 billion ($2019) annually in the United States (Pimentel, Zuniga, and Morrison 2005) and up to 12 percent of GDP in some developed countries...

Stewardship consists of acts of claims-making on space and caretaking of place that activate urban environments to function as social infra-structure. While stewardship practices are enacted by actors across the governance network, there is a need to better understand the role of civil society. Civic stewardship groups care and advocate for green, grey, and blue spaces, and can strengthen social trust and foster civic engagement. We conducted semi-structured interviews (n = 26) with a sample of New York City civic stewardship groups from a previous survey dataset (n = 754); the sample was...

Trees and urban forests remove particulate matter (PM) from the air through the deposition of particles on the leaf surface, thus helping to improve air quality and reduce respiratory problems in urban areas. Leaf deposited PM, in turn, is either resuspended back into the atmosphere, washed off during rain events or transported to the ground with litterfall. The net amount of PM removed depends on crown and leaf characteristics, air pollution concentration, and weather conditions, such as wind speed and precipitation. Many existing deposition models, such as i-Tree Eco, calculate PM2.5...

Background: With the introduction of the Trillion Trees Initiative and similar programs, forests' ability to absorb carbon dioxide is increasingly in the spotlight. Many states have mandates to develop climate action plans, of which forest carbon is an important component, and planners need current information on forest carbon stocks and rates of change at relevant spatial scales. To this end, we examine rates of average annual change in live aboveground tree carbon in different forest type groups and provide state-wide and regional summaries of current live tree carbon stock and rates of...

This report traces the flow of Wyoming’s 2018 timber harvest through the primary wood products industry and characterizes the structure, capacity, and condition of Wyoming’s forest products sector. Trends in timber harvest, production, sawmill capacity, mill residuals, and sales value are presented. Employment and worker earnings in the State’s primary and secondary forest products industries are also discussed. Periodic survey data collected from the forest products industry provides detailed information on Wyoming’s timber resources, wood utilization, and the economic contributions of...

Wildfires are known to be one of the main causes of soil erosion and land degradation, and their impacts on ecosystems and society are expected to increase in the future due to changes in climate and land use. It is therefore vital to mitigate the increased hydrological and erosive response after wildfires to maintain the sustainability of ecosystems and protect the values at risk downstream from the fire-affected areas. Soil erosion mitigation treatments have been widely applied after wildfires but assessment of their effectiveness has been limited to local and regional-scale studies,...

Occupancy-based monitoring has become an important tool in wildlife conservation and management. Nonetheless, meeting occupancy modeling assumptions and providing biologically accurate information are difficult tasks over long time periods, large areas, or whenmonitoringmultiple species. In occupancymodeling frameworks, derived grids are commonly used to divide landscapes intodiscrete units. Grid sizes thatmatch the home range size of the species of interest are considered optimal, but this practice is complicated as home range size may vary by sex, habitat quality, or among species....