We hypothesized that tree form, recorded in historical public land surveys, would provide a valuable proxy record of regeneration patterns during early-European settlement of North America's eastern deciduous forest. To test this hypothesis, we tallied stem form fromwitness trees used in land survey records in the southern Appalachian Mountains from 13 counties spanning four physiographic provi...

The endosperm cells of the American basswood Tilia americana are favorable experimental material for investigating the birefringence of living plant spindles and anaphase movement of chromosomes. The behavior of the chromosomes in anaphase and the formation of the phragmoplast are unique. The numerous (3 n equals 123), small chromosomes move in precise, parallel rows until midanaphase when they...

Studies of the long-term impacts of acidic deposition in Europe and North America have prompted growing interest in understanding the dynamics linking the nitrogen (N) and calcium (Ca) cycles in forested watersheds. While it has been shown that increasing concentrations of nitrate (NO3-) through atmospheric deposition or through nitrification can increase Ca loss, the reciprocal effects of Ca o...

Cellulose is the major component of plant biomass, and microbial cellulose utilization is a key step in the decomposition of plant detritus. Despite this, little is known about the diversity of cellulolytic microbial communities in soil. Fungi are well known for their cellulolytic activity and mediate key functions during the decomposition of plant detritus in terrestrial ecosystems. We develop...

To investigate the influence of regional pollen inputs on reconstructing local vegetation, we compared modern pollen assemblages deposited in forest hollow sediments from two study areas, Michigan and Wisconsin. Local forest-stand composition (within 50 m) at all sites is dominated by hemlock and northern hardwood trees, but the regional abundance of tree taxa in the two study areas is not the ...

A Tale of a Lake More than 15,000 years ago, glaciers advancing from the northeast gouged a basin of more than 200 km near what is now Madison, Wisconsin, USA. The ice was more than 300 m thick. A considerable amount of water flowed over the land as the glaciers melted, about 12,000 years ago. This water filled much of the basin, which became the watershed of what is now the Madison Lakes (Fig....

We examined reassembly of winning and losing tree species, species traits including shade and fire tolerance, and associated disturbance filters and forest ecosystem types due to rapid forest change in the Great Lakes region since 1850. We identified winning and losing species by changes in composition, distribution, and site factors between historical and current surveys in Minnesota's mixed a...

The purpose of this study was to test the feasibility of using respiratory correlated mega voltage cone-beam computed tomography (MVCBCT), taken during patient localization, to quantify the size and motion of lung tumors. An imaging phantom was constructed of a basswood frame embedded with six different-sized spherical pieces of paraffin wax. The Quasar respiratory motion phantom was programmed...

Two-choice tests were conducted to examine the effect of surface roughness on the resting preference of bed bugs, Cimex lectularius L., on copper, basswood, and acrylic materials. The influence of pyrethroid formulation applications on resting preferences was also evaluated. Bed bugs were given the choice of resting between two sanded halves of each material tested. One half was sanded with a P...