Treesearch

This paper draws upon Actor Network Theory (ANT) to explore material and social dynamics of a coastal community garden site on public housing grounds in Rockaway, NY after Hurricane Sandy. Through a participatory design-research project, we examine shifting associations between humans and non-humans as a way of interrogating agency, power dynamics, and governance. Acknowledging our own outsider status, we draw upon the frame of 'contact zones' for thinking through encounters in conditions of power differentials. In describing our encounter with the Beach 41st Street Community Garden as a...

Shrubs are an important component of terrestrial plant communities in both forested and nonforested ecosystems, but relatively little information is available on their distributions. This project provides mapped occurrences for 78 native shrub species found in the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and western Montana) as derived from two large regional databases: the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis database of vegetation collected as part of a nationwide forest inventory and the Consortium of Pacific Northwest Herbaria online...

Shared stewardship for the National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS), or the creation of partnerships between the land management agencies and non-governmental entities, is integral to the completion of basic and fundamental stewardship tasks within Wilderness (e.g., trail work, Leave-No-Trace education, monitoring). However, successful shared stewardship for Wilderness is impeded by a variety of barriers, which are institutional (e.g., employee turnover), practical (e.g., lack of staff, limited informational resources about how to set up partnerships), and conceptual (e.g., ambiguity...

Between August 2019 and January 2020, social science research was completed in support of the comprehensive river management plan (CRMP) revision on the Flathead Wild and Scenic River system (Flathead WSR system). This report provides full analysis and results of this research, which includes multiple different perspectives about how people relate to the Flathead WSR system (i.e., ‘human-nature relationships’), those things (e.g., management actions, environmental change) that threaten or potentially benefit such human-nature relationships (i.e., ‘drivers of change’), and opinions about...

Light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data can provide detailed information about three-dimensional forest structure. However, links between forest structure and tree function have not been fully evaluated using LiDAR. We assessed the relationship of LiDAR-derived structural categories to tree health and productivity on 36 hardwood plots at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, New Hampshire, USA. We established nine plot replicates for each of four LiDAR-based vegetation categories: 1) high crown and high understory closure; 2) high crown and low understory closure; 3) low crown and high...

Felled trees with tops and branches are transported to the landing with a grapple skidder in conventional groundbased whole-tree (WT) harvesting. This method has greater potential to damage advance regeneration than those in which trees are processed at-stump. Hybrid tree-length (Hyb TL) harvesting using an stroke-boom delimber for in-woods processing might be a feasible alternative, but little is known about the production economics of this method. An experimental strip-cutting study was conducted in central Maine, US in the winter of 2018 to: (1) evaluate and compare operational productiv...

Aerial discrete return LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) technology (ALS – Aerial Laser Scanner) is now widely used for forest characterization due to its high accuracy in measuring vertical and horizontal forest structure. Random and systematic errors can still occur and these affect the native point cloud, ultimately degrading ALS data accuracy, especially when adopting datasets that were not natively designed for forest applications. A detailed understanding of how uncertainty of ALS data could affect the accuracy of derivable forest metrics (e.g. tree height, stem diameter, basal...

Trees in dry forests often regenerate in episodic pulses when wet periods coincide with ample seed production. Factors leading to success or failure of regeneration pulses are poorly understood. We investigated the impacts of stand thinning on survival and growth of the 2013 cohort of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Douglas ex P. Lawson & C. Lawson) seedlings in northern Arizona, United States.Wemeasured seedling survival and growth over the first five growing seasons after germination in six stand basal areas (BAs; 0, 7, 14, 23, 34, and 66 (unthinned)m2·ha-1) produced by long-term...

The overall forest area in the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) experienced a period of relative stability from 2004 to 2014, considering that forest cover changes have been within sampling errors ever since 2004. A total of 46,967 acres of forest area (57.2 percent forest cover) was estimated in 2014 for the USVI. There were 29,610 acres of forest on St. Croix (56.1 percent forest cover), 9,830 acres on St. John (81.3 percent forest cover) and 7,528 acres of forest on St. Thomas (43.6 percent forest cover). A total of 121 tree species were encountered within a total sampled area of 8.1 acres in...

Research Highlights: Long-term exposure of paper birch to elevated carbon dioxide (CO2) and ozone (O3) modified metabolite content of over-wintering buds, but no evidence of reduced freezing tolerance was found. Background and Objectives: Atmospheric change may affect the metabolite composition of over-wintering buds and, in turn, impact growth onset and stress tolerance of perennial plant species in spring. Materials and Methods: Low molecular weight compounds of paper birch (Betula papyrifera) buds, including lipophilic, polar and phenolic compounds were analyzed, and freezing tolerance...