Treesearch

1. Although most lotic ecosystems experience frequent and sometimes large disturbances, opportunities are uncommon to study primary succession in streams. Exceptions include new stream channels arising from events such as glacial retreat, volcanism, and catastrophic landslides. In 1980, the eruption and massive landslide at Mount St. Helens (WA, U.S.A.) created an entire landscape with five new catchments undergoing primary succession. We asked if riparian and lotic assemblages at early successional stages (36 years after the eruption) showed predictable change along longitudinal gradients...

Aim: Mangrove wetlands span broad geographical gradients, resulting in functionally diverse tree communities. We asked whether latitudinal variation, allometric scaling relationships and species composition influence mangrove forest structure and biomass allocation across biogeographical regions and distinct coastal morphologies. Location: Global. Time period: Present. Major taxa studied: Mangrove ecosystems. Methods: We built the largest field‐based dataset on mangrove forest structure and biomass to date (c. 2,800 plots from 67 countries) to address macroecological questions pertaining...

Winter stream temperatures, though infrequently studied, exert important influences on aquatic communities. To quantify effects of watershed physical characteristics on stream winter thermal regime, 54 streams (watershed area = 0.2–7.9 km2; altitude < 1300 m) on the Olympic Peninsula, Washington, USA were monitored hourly for 4 years. During the study, an exceptionally warm winter (2015) was used to evaluate influences of watershed characteristics under climatic conditions similar to those projected for mid-twenty-first century. Four watershed characteristics were hypothesized to influence...

The Asian longhorned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis Motschulsky) (ALB) is an invasive polyphagous woodborer that has been introduced to North America and Europe. Due to the severe economic and ecological damage resulting from infestations of this insect, many countries, including the United States, have adopted policies of eradication. However, managing eradication can be a daunting challenge as it requires program managers to identify and destroy individual infested trees distributed across landscapes that may include millions of host trees. This report describes the use of the computer...

Data in this report come primarily from the USDA Forest Service, National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS). The NWOS is implemented by the Forest Inventory and Analysis program to answer questions related to who owns the forests, why they own it, what they have done with it in the past, and what they intend to do with it in the future. The family forest ownership results are based on random sample of 214 family forest ownerships from Wisconsin who participated in the NWOS in 2017 and 2018. The sampling errors provided below are important for assessing the reliability of the estimates. Additiona...

Data in this report come primarily from the USDA Forest Service, National Woodland Owner Survey (NWOS). The NWOS is implemented by the Forest Inventory and Analysis program to answer questions related to who owns the forests, why they own it, what they have done with it in the past, and what they intend to do with it in the future. The family forest ownership results are based on random sample of 288 family forest ownerships from Wyoming who participated in the NWOS in 2017 and 2018. The sampling errors provided below are important for assessing the reliability of the estimates. Additional...

Emerald ash borer (EAB) (Agrilus planipennis) has had an extensive impact across North America. It is currently present in Minnesota, USA but has not been observed in northern portions of the state where the vast majority of black ash (Fraxinus nigra) trees are located. Unlike other ash forest communities, the black ash forest type occurs in wetlands and is dominated by black ash with few associate species. Because of this, the loss of black ash can result in changes to the hydrological regime and species composition. The goal of this study was to quantify the structure and composition of...

Landfills in the United States are a significant source of pollution to ground and surface water. Current environmental regulations require detection and/or monitoring assessments of landfill leachate for contaminants that have been deemed particularly harmful. However, the lists of contaminants to be monitored are not comprehensive. Further, landfill leachate composition varies over space and time, and thus the contaminants, and their corresponding toxicity, are not consistent across or within landfills. One of the main objectives of this study was to prioritize contaminants found in...

The long-term supply of ecosystem services is dependent on properly functioning ecosystems and their susceptibility to natural and anthropogenic disturbances such as climate change and urbanization, as they can alter ecosystem structure and function. Forest function is not static, but rather a risky asset that fluctuates and can decrease as a result of forest disturbance. Therefore, concepts such as resilience and insurance value as well effective policy formulation, management, and restoration are key to maintaining these benefits. This study estimates the insurance value that the public...

Relatively little is known about the dynamics of tropical urban forests, their phylogenetic diversity, as well as the socioeconomic and ecological factors that influence overall diversity across the urban landscape. However, permanent forest inventory and monitoring plot networks are increasingly being established across forests and cities of the world to monitor structural and functional attributes of urban forests, as well as ecosystem services. We analyzed a tropical, coastal urban forest in San Juan, Puerto Rico using metrics of phylogenetic diversity (PD), plant diversity, and...