Treesearch

The USDA Forest Service uses satellite imagery, along with a sample of national forest inventory field plots, to monitor and predict changes in forest conditions over time t hroughout the United States. We specifically focus on a 230,400 hectare region in north-central Wisconsin between 2003 - 2012. The auxiliary data from the satellite imagery of this region are relatively dense in space and time, and can be used to learn how forest conditions changed over that decade. However, these records have a significant proportion of missing values due to weather conditions and system failures that...

Collaborative adaptive management (CAM) is hypothesized to benefit management of rangeland ecosystems, but the presumed benefits have seldom been quantified, and never in a multipaddock rotational grazing system. Here, we evaluated average daily weight gain (ADG) of livestock (kg steer−1 d−1) in four grazing management treatments during the summers of 2016−2018 in a semiarid shortgrass steppe. These four treatments had the same stocking rate but differed in stocking densities. The three lowest stocking densities were implemented using nonadaptive grazing management, while the highest...

Wildfire affects many types of communities. Improved understandings of urban conflagrations are leading some fire-prone communities, such as Ashland, Oregon, to expand their attention from focusing solely on the intermix fringe to managing wildfire threats across more urbanized wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities. The core intent of this project was to build a partnership between the Wildfire Research (WiRē) Team and Ashland Fire and Rescue (AFR) by leveraging existing wildfire risk data collected in March 2018 and pairing it with newly collected social data to better understand...

Patterns of gene flow and gene introgression can be used to assess the risk of genetic pollution of wild forest trees from widespread cultivated trees. A comprehensive understanding of the genetic relationships and levels of gene flow among wild and cultivated common walnut (Juglans regia) has become an urgent issue. Using twelve microsatellite markers, we investigated the genetic diversity and gene flow between cultivated and wild trees of J. regia in the Qinling Mountains, China. A high level of genetic variation was detected in both cultivated and wild trees. The mean number of alleles...

An estimated 10 million families, individuals, trusts, and estates own 39 percent of the forestland in the United States, excluding interior Alaska. Using segmented regression, the relationships between size of forest holdings and the attitudes and behaviors of these family forest ownerships were tested using data from the 2018 iteration of the USDA Forest Service's National Woodland Owner Survey. All 16 variables tested have significant relationships with size of forest holdings, and 13 have one or more breakpoints, ranging from 40 to 5,854 ac, where the relationships between the variables...

Eddy covariance (EC) measurements of ecosystem-atmosphere carbon dioxide (CO2) exchange provide the most direct assessment of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Measurement biases for open-path (OP) CO2 concentration and flux measurements have been reported for over 30 years, but their origin and appropriate correction approach remain unresolved. Here, we quantify the impacts of OP biases on carbon and radiative forcing budgets for a sub-boreal wetland. Comparison with a reference closed-path (CP) system indicates that a systematic OP flux bias (0.54 μmol m-2s-1) persists for all seasons...

Group selection is one potential tool in contemporary, uneven-aged silviculture for mitigating increased dominance by shade-tolerant species while continuing to meet stocking goals and harvest quotas. However, recent experimental group-selection openings in northern hardwood forests on some sites in the Upper Great Lakes region have failed to meet management goals of increased tree diversity and timely natural regeneration. Few observational studies have documented the long-term stand development of nascent cohorts following group-selection prescriptions. This study revisits a long-term...

Restoration of fire-prone forests is a common practice intended to increase resilience to wildfire, drought, and bark beetles. However, the long-term effects of restoration treatments on understory species, particularly nonnative species, are poorly understood. We investigated long-term (23 years) effects of restoration treatments on native and non-native understory vegetation at the Lick Creek Demonstration-Research Forest, a ponderosa pine/Douglas-fir forest in western Montana, USA. Restoration treatments included shelterwood-with-reserves harvesting implemented alone or in combination...

1. Understanding how plant populations respond to multiple drivers is increasingly critical for biodiversity conservation under global change. Indigenous knowledge can provide guidance for sustainable management, but the outcome of its application in novel ecosystems is rarely known. Simulating the re‐introduction of Indigenous stewardship in contemporary contexts with population models allows for the comparison of different management scenarios and the elucidation of the mechanisms driving population outcomes. 2. Beargrass Xerophyllum tenaxis an ecologically and culturally important...

The distribution of urban ecosystem services (UES) is often uneven across socioeconomic groups, leading to environmental justice issues. Understanding the distribution of UES across a landscape can help managers ensure an equitable distribution of services. While many past studies have focused on the distribution of green spaces in relation to socioeconomic variables, this research analyzes the distribution of UES provided by these green spaces. This research quantified air pollution removal, atmospheric carbon reduction, and surface runoff mitigation provided by urban trees in Strasbourg...