Treesearch

Predicting the hydrological consequences following changes in grassland vegetation type (i.e., woody encroachment) requires an understanding of water flux dynamics at high spatiotemporal resolution for predominant species within grassland communities. However, grassland fluxes are typically measured at the leaf or landscape scale, which inhibits our ability to predict how individual species contribute to changing ecosystem fluxes. We used external heat balance sap flow sensors and a hierarchical Bayesian state-space modeling approach to bridge this “flux gap” and estimate continuous...

Detecting and understanding disturbance is a challenge in ecology that has grown more critical with global environmental change and the emergence of research on social–ecological systems. We identify three areas of research need: developing a flexible framework that incorporates feedback loops between social and ecological systems, anticipating whether a disturbance will change vulnerability to other environmental drivers, and incorporating changes in system sensitivity to disturbance in the face of global changes in environmental drivers. In the present article, we review how discoveries...

Dense understory thickets of the native evergreen shrub Rhododendron maximum expanded initially following elimination of American chestnut by the chestnut blight, and later in response to loss of the eastern hemlock due to hemlock woolly adelgid invasion. Rhododendron thickets often blanket streams and their riparian zones, creating cool, low-light microclimates. To determine the effect of such understory thickets on summer stream temperatures, we removed riparian rhododendron understory on 300 m reaches of two southern Appalachian Mountain headwater streams, while leaving two 300 m...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program surveys primary roundwood receiving facilities in the United States to determine industrial uses of roundwood. The questionnaires provide general mill information such as location, type, and size, as well as procurement information such as the volume of roundwood received by product type, species, and geographic origin. The questionnaires are also used to estimate the volume, type, and use of mill residues. For ease of reporting, few restrictions are placed on the units of measure, meaning mills...

White-nose syndrome (WNS) has caused large declines in bat populations across eastern North America, making information on demographics of affected species critical to determining their risk for extinction. We used Cormack–Jolly–Seber models to estimate apparent survival rates of hibernating tricolored bats (Perimyotis subflavus) for 5 years in four small abandoned mines in the Ouachita Mountains of Arkansas, located within the WNS endemic area of the United States. Populations in individual mines varied greatly in survival rates, with one mine displaying annual survival rates as high as...

Recent studies show that molecular convergence plays an unexpectedly common role in the evolution of convergent phenotypes. We exploited this phenomenon to find candidate loci underlying resistance to the emerald ash borer (EAB, Agrilus planipennis), the United States’ most costly invasive forest insect to date, within the pan-genome of ash trees (the genus Fraxinus). We show that EAB-resistant taxa occur within three independent phylogenetic lineages. In genomes from these resistant lineages, we detect 53 genes with evidence of convergent amino acid evolution. Gene-tree reconstruction...

This resource update is a brief look at some of the basic metrics that describe the status of and changes to forest resources in Illinois. This information is based on field data collected using the USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) annualized sample design, and it is updated yearly.Tables for Forests of Illinois, 2019 can be found at https://doi.org/10.2737/FS-RU-228-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.

Forests provide many tangible goods for human use. “Provisioning” of these goods is one of four categories of ecosystem service (ES) (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005). Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are a general category of goods provisioned by forests, which include food, medicine, decorations, landscaping, and arts and crafts (Chamberlain, Bush, and Hammett 1998); Chamberlain, Emery, and Patel-Weynand 2018) forests. NTFPs do not include “timber,” that is, wood utilized at industrial scales or sold in commodity markets, but they do include firewood and wood for artisanal purposes...

Ephemeral ponds in the Munson Sand Hills region (MSH) of Apalachicola National Forest (ANF) are an essential resource in the life cycles of a variety of amphibian species, a number of which are threatened or endangered. Various types of human activities have disturbed some of these ponds threatening their survival. Although extensive research has been done on the biology of amphibians in the ponds, little is known of the invertebrates and to what extent the water quality may be affected by human impacts. We monitored 4 ponds, representing a spectrum of sizes, natural settings, and anthropog...

We review literature relevant to assessing the future of tropical forests and supplement the review with new data from the lowlands of Venezuela. Compared to today, future tropical forests will have a higher level of novelty, defined as the degree of dissimilarity of a system relative to a historical baseline. Processes of succession and evolution generate novelty in forests and have done so for millennia. Under increasing human activity and climate change, the rate of generation of novelty has increased and the resulting forests are termed novel forests to distinguish them from historical...