Treesearch

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....

The juniper (Juniperus ashei) - oak (Quercus sp.) woodlands of central Texas are susceptible to crown fire due to climate change, land use change, and fire suppression. Low-intensity prescribed fire is one method used to reduce fuel loads and lower the risk of crown fire. Better knowledge of the impacts of prescribed fire on fuel loads, vegetation structure, and the endangered golden-cheeked warbler (Setophaga chrysoparia), a songbird that breeds exclusively in these woodlands, is needed to inform management decisions. We conducted a before-after controlimpact study on three plot-pairs...

Tree-rings representing annual dates from live and deadwood Pinus flexilis at ten sites across the central Great Basin (~38°N) yielded a cumulative record across 4002 years (1983 BC–AD 2019). Individual site chronologies ranged in length from 861–4002 years; all were continuous over their sample depths. Correlations of growth with climate were positive for water relations and mostly negative for summer temperatures. Growth was generally correlated across sites, with the central Nevada stands most distinct. Although growth was low during the Late Holocene Dry Period, variability marked this...

The Kings River Experimental Watersheds (KREW) were established in 2002 to expand our knowledge of catchment physical, chemical, and biological processes in Sierra Nevada headwater forests, and to better understand the impacts of prescribed burning and forest thinning on these processes. Two elevation strata (high and low) were selected for the KREW sites, with four independent catchments and one nested catchment within each stratum. Both high and low elevation study areas were instrumented for continuous measurements of meteorology, streamflow, and turbidity. Atmospheric and stream...

Impact assessment is an important and cost-effective tool for assisting in the identification and prioritization of invasive alien species. With the number of alien and invasive alien species expected to increase, reliance on impact assessment tools for the identification of species that pose the greatest threats will continue to grow. Given the importance of such assessments for management and resource allocation, it is critical to understand the uncertainty involved and what effect this may have on the outcome. Using an uncertainty typology and insects as a model taxon, we identified and...

Urban tree cover provides benefits to human health and well-being, but previous studies suggest that tree cover is often inequitably distributed. Here, we use National Agriculture Imagery Program digital ortho photographs to survey the tree cover inequality for Census blocks in US large urbanized areas, home to 167 million people across 5,723 municipalities and other Census-designated places. We compared tree cover to summer land surface temperature, as measured using Landsat imagery. In 92% of the urbanized areas surveyed, low-income blocks have less tree cover than high-income blocks. On...