Many species of plants produce leaves with distinct teeth around their margins. The presence and nature of these teeth can often help botanists to identify species. Moreover, it has long been known that more species native to colder regions have teeth than species native to warmer regions. It has therefore been suggested that fossilized remains of leaves can be used as a proxy for ancient clima...

In recent years, growing attention has been devoted to the use of lignocellulosic biomass as a feedstock to produce renewable carbohydrates as a source of energy products, including liquid alternatives to fossil fuels. The benefits of developing woody biomass to ethanol technology are to increase the long-term national energy security, reduce fossil energy consumption, lower greenhouse gas emis...

The effects of atmospheric nitrogen (N) deposition on organic matter decomposition vary with the biochemical characteristics of plant litter. At the ecosystem-scale, net effects are difficult to predict because various soil organic matter (SOM) fractions may respond differentially. We investigated the relationship between SOM chemistry and microbial activity in three northern deciduous forest e...

We investigated interannual variability of canopy transpiration per unit ground area (E (C)) and per unit leaf area (E (L)) across seven tree species in northern Wisconsin over two years. These species have previously been shown to be sufficient to upscale stand-level transpiration to the landscape level during one growing season. Our objective was to test whether a simple plant hydraulic model...

© The Ecological Society of America www.frontiersinecology.org C interiors have biome boundaries that are highly sensitive to climate change. The northern prairie–forest biome border in central North America is such a case; it is ~2700 km in length, extending from northern Alberta, Canada, southeastward across the Canadian prairie provinces, and into the western Great Lakes region of the US (De...

Since European settlement, hardwood dominated forests of the Upper American Midwest have undergone compositional changes due to fire suppression and changes in land use. It is not clear how these changes affect songbirds during spring migration. In 2009 and 2010, we quantified foraging behavior by migratory songbirds during spring migration and collected data on tree and sapling diversity in th...

Turbulent fluxes of carbon, water vapor, and temperature were continuously measured above an upland forest in north central Wisconsin during 1999 and 2000 using the eddy covariance method. Maple (Acer saccharum), basswood (Tilia americana), and green ash (Fraxinus pennsylvanica) species found in this forest also comprise a substantial portion of the landscape in the northern Great Lakes region ...

Rates of base-cation immobilization in the stem of basswood, beech, red oak, red maple, sugar maple and white ash were compared to identify the relative potential for impoverishing soils. Two natural stands in southern Quebec were studied. Allometric equations predicting stem nutrient content from stem diameter were developed. Between 20 and 25 trees per species were sampled for age and stem di...

EuroAmerican land use and its legacies have transformed forest structure and composition across the United States (US). More accurate reconstructions of historical states are critical to understanding the processes governing past, current, and future forest dynamics. Gridded (8x8km) estimates of pre-settlement (1800s) forests from the upper Midwestern US (Minnesota, Wisconsin, and most of Michi...