Treesearch

A non-native invasive insect, the hemlock woolly adelgid (HWA), threatens the ability of natural resource managers to maintain eastern and Carolina hemlocks as critical components of unique forest ecosystems in eastern North America. Although substantial progress has been made in both chemical and biological control of HWA, neither of these tactics applied alone are expected to provide adequate control of HWA throughout its introduced range. This guide presents a methodological strategy for integrating biological and chemical control together in the same forest stands. The goal of the...

If new or expanded opportunities for adding value to species, sizes, and qualities of hardwood timber are to be successful, development efforts must be congruent with the needs of the front end of the supply chain—the hardwood forest resource and the owners and managers of that resource. Undervalued hardwood utilization will be feasible only where the current and future hardwood resource will support the development and where forest management objectives of forestland owners and managers will be supported.

Invasions by non-native pests and diseases represent serious threats to biodiversity, agriculture and human health. Under current border arrival rates associated with international trade not all such invasions can be prevented, so early detection and eradication (forced extinction) are important strategies for preventing establishment and long-term impacts. Removal of host plants has historically been a common tool used alone and in concert with other tools for eradication of plant pests but there is little scientific theory specific to the management of invasive species to guide the...

Soil organic carbon (SOC) information is fundamental for improving global carbon cycle modeling efforts, but discrepancies exist from country‐to‐global scales. We predicted the spatial distribution of SOC stocks (topsoil; 0–30 cm) and quantified modeling uncertainty across Mexico and the conterminous United States (CONUS). We used a multisource SOC dataset (>10 000 pedons, between 1991 and 2010) coupled with a simulated annealing regression framework that accounts for variable selection. Our model explained ~50% of SOC spatial variability (across 250‐m grids). We analyzed model variance,...

Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) is a US Department of Agriculture Forest Service program that aims to monitor changes in forests across the US. FIA hosts one of the largest ecological datasets in the world, though its complexity limits access for many potential users. rFIA is an R package designed to simplify the estimation of forest attributes using data collected by the FIA Program. Specifically, rFIA improves access to the spatiotemporal estimation capacity of the FIA Database via space–time indexed summaries of forest variables within user-defined population boundaries (e.g.,...

Global ecosystem functions, services, and commodities are increasingly threatened by biological invasions. As a result, there is an urgent need to manage invasive species through global collaborative research. We propose an 'applied empirical framework' (AEF) to aggressively confront the current global biological invasion crisis. The AEF builds on existing models for invasion science that advocate 1) standardized research designs to reveal key aspects of biological invasion, and 2) collaborative research to facilitate the sharing of resources and information. The AEF further emphasizes the...

Social animals are among the most successful organisms on the planet and derive many benefits from living in groups, including facilitating the evolution of agriculture. However, living in groups increases the risk of disease transmission in social animals themselves and the cultivated crops upon which they obligately depend. Social insects offer an interesting model to compare to human societies, in terms of how insects manage disease within their societies and with their agricultural symbionts. As living in large groups can help the spread of beneficial microbes as well as pathogens, we...

The aim of this study was to evaluate the change in colorimetric patterns and the termite resistance of lightcolored and low durability wood when impregnated with teak (Tectona grandis) heartwood extractives. Hot water and ethanol extracts were obtained from 20-year-old teak heartwood and used to evaluate the influence on color change and the natural resistance of 10-year-old teak sapwood and Pinus sp. For wood impregnation, a full-cell (Bethell) treatment was conducted. To verify the influence of the teak extracts, the colorimetric patterns of wood were determined using the Munsell and...