Treesearch

Forest management is trending toward creating multi-aged forest structures and diverse vegetative compositions. The challenge is successfully designing and implementing treatments that create these diverse forests. Regeneration establishment is the most important step when applying a silvicultural system because it determines future treatments and optimizes management options. This study provided the minimum canopy openings that favor the establishment of shade-tolerant and shade-intolerant tree species to inform the implementation of uneven-aged management.

The first few years of the 21st century brought a series of unprecedented natural disturbances to the southwestern U.S. A severe drought, later tagged as a “global change type drought,” triggered the mortality of 1,000 of native trees. For some species, such as the ponderosa pine, the drought was especially lethal due to high tree densities which were the outcome, in part, of the impacts of past management practices. Already crowded, and competing for water, the drought further weakened the pine trees, making them more susceptible to mortality due to several species of bark beetles that...

Increasingly, scholars have sought to understand the role of collective action across property boundaries to address natural resource management challenges. Although the growing focus on collective action for natural resource management has led to many new and potentially useful insights for governance and outreach, we suggest that researchers and practitioners may benefit from taking a step back to think about the degree and type of collective action that is needed for each particular social-ecological context. We use the examples of invasive species management, fire management, and...

Forest insect outbreaks have caused and will continue to cause extensive tree mortality worldwide, affecting ecosystem services provided by forests. Remote sensing is an effective tool for detecting and mapping tree mortality caused by forest insect outbreaks. In this study, we map insect-caused tree mortality across three coniferous forests in the Western United States for the years 1984 to 2018. First, we mapped mortality at the tree level using field observations and high-resolution multispectral imagery collected in 2010, 2011, and 2018. Using these high-resolution maps of tree...

This resource update is a brief look at some of the basic metrics that describe the status of and changes to forest resources in Florida. This information is based on field data collected using the USDA Forest Service Inventory and Analysis (FIA) annualized sample design, and id updated yearly.Tables for Florida, 2017 can be found at https://doi.org/10.2737/FS-RU-255-TablesThe FIA one-click application that generated this report can be found at https://doi.org/10.2737/FIA-One-Click-State-Report-v1.2.

Evacuation is the preferred method in the U.S. for preserving public safety in wildfire. However, alternatives such as staying and defending are used both in North America and Australia. Dangerous delays in the decision to evacuate are also common. One contributor to the evacuation decision is attachment to the home, however, little research has examined its role in evacuation decisions. We explored the role of home attachment in the evacuation decision and the effectiveness of communication and other cues in motivating safer, more decisive response actions. Using an online sample (n =...

Tropical secondary forests (SF) play an important role in the global carbon cycle as a major terrestrial carbon sink. Here, we use high‐resolution TerraClass data set for tracking land use activities in the Brazilian Amazon from 2004–2014 to detect spatial patterns and carbon sequestration dynamics of secondary forests (SF). By integrating satellite lidar and radar observations, we found the SF area in the Brazilian Amazon increased from approximately 22 Mha (106 ha) in 2004 to 28 Mha in 2014. However, the expansion in area was also accompanied by a dynamic land use activity that resulted...

Potential impacts of climate change on the position of the wetland-hydrology boundary were estimated for four sites in the Eastern U.S. Precipitation and temperature predictions were obtained from the Hadley general circulation model (UKMOHadCM3) because it most closely approximated observed precipitation for the period 1950–2000. The DRAINMOD hydrologic model was used to compute daily water table levels over two time periods: 1983–2012 (current conditions) and 2041–2070 (future conditions). For each site and time period, the model simulated water table depths for a soil pedon (Typic...

Bottomland hardwood forests will face challenges in a changing climate from altered hydrology and shifting habitat suitability for key species. Scientist-manager partnerships have been developed across the Upper Mississippi River to assess the vulnerability of bottomland hardwood forests to climate change and to develop and implement adaptation strategies using the Climate Change Response Framework developed by the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science. Strategies include planning for more frequent and severe flooding by planting more flood-tolerant species, and planning for...

Variable density thinning (VDT) post-treatment monitoring is challenging and potentially costly because resulting stand structure is not well characterized by small area plots used in forestry. Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) offer a potential solution for efficient VDT monitoring via rapid survey and subsequent generation of a stem map. In this study we used a UAS to survey and estimate spatial dispersion and stand structure (e.g., basal area, trees per acre, and quadratic mean diameter) in untreated and VDTtreated stands. Results showed evidence of increased clustering in the treated...