Important climatic information may be contained in long tree-ring records from the upper treeline of mid-latitude mountains. Preliminary work and the results of related research suggest that the variation in annual ring-width series from bristlecone pine (~. aristata) at the upper treeline is related to year-to-year differences in the temperature regime, in contrast to the "drought sensitivity"...

In the wake of numerous catastrophic wildfires, forest management policies have been implemented in recent years in the United States, including the Healthy Forest Restoration Act of 2003. A key premise underlying these policies is that fire suppression has resulted in denser forests than were present historically in some forest types. We evaluate this premise for the montane zone of the northe...

More frequent fire activity associated with climate warming is expected to increase the extent of young forest stands in fire-prone landscapes, yet growth rates and biomass allocation patterns in young forests that regenerated naturally following stand-replacing fire have not been well studied. We assessed the structural and functional characteristics of young, postfire lodgepole pine (Pinus co...

Forests can partially offset greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to climate change mitigation, mainly through increases in live biomass. We quantified carbon (C) density in 20 managed longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) forests ranging in age from 5 to 118 years located across the southeastern United States and estimated above- and belowground C trajectories. Ecosystem C stock (all pools ...

-Native Monterey pine (Pinus radiata) forests occur in five populations on the west coast of North America. High severity fire has been reported to be the main disturbance agent that initiates seedling establishment for this species. To investigate the impacts of fire in this ecosystem, age structure and fire history data were collected from the native Ano Nuevo Monterey pine forest near Santa ...

High-value trees, such as those located in residential, recreational, or administrative sites, are particularly susceptible to bark beetle (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) attack as a result of increased amounts of stress associated with drought, soil compaction, mechanical injury, or vandalism. Tree losses in these unique environments generally have a substantial impact. The value of th...

The range between a sensor and the target, the incidence angle, and the target reflectance, are known factors that can influence the intensity values of LiDAR data and consequently, its use in many applications. However, very few studies have provided a quantitative analysis of the effects of normalisation of these three factors on forest leaf area index (LAI) estimations. In this paper, using ...

Dynamics in microclimate and physiological plant traits were studied for Pubescent oak and Scots pine in a dry inner-alpine valley in Switzerland, at a 10 min resolution for three consecutive years (2001-2003). As expected, stomata tended to close with increasing drought in air and soil. However, stomatal aperture in oak was smaller than in pine under relatively wet conditions, but larger under...

Approximately 3.200 trees in young mixed~conifer stands were examined for pest activity and human-caused or mechanical injuries, and approximately 25 percent of these trees were randomly selected for stem analyses. The examination of trees felled for stem analyses showed that 409 (47 percent) were free of pests and 466 (53 percent) had one or more pest categories. Incense~cedar contained the fe...