The Great Plains of the United States has undergone extensive land-use and land-cover change in the past 150 years, with much of the once vast native grasslands and wetlands converted to agricultural crops, and much of the unbroken prairie now heavily grazed. Future land-use change in the region…
Spatial and temporal resolution is essential for understanding the spatial and temporal characteristics and dynamics of wetland ecosystems. However, single satellite imagery with both high spatial resolution and high temporal frequency is currently unavailable. Instead, the development of a bi-…
Forest fragmentation threatens the sustainability of forest communities in the eastern United States. Forest communities exhibiting either a low total area or low percentage of intact forest are subject to relatively higher risk of shifts in stand composition towards edge-adapted and invasive…
The biobaler is a novel approach to cut woody crops up to 150-mm basal diameter and compress the biomass into round bales. It can be used to harvest short-rotation woody crop plantations such as willow or hybrid poplar. It can also be used to clear wild brush, forest understory, and encroaching…
Although common disturbances of grazing lands like plant defoliation are expected to affect their sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration, almost no research has been conducted to evaluate how important such effects might be on the direct responses of rangelands to CO2. This…
Liu, X., Burras, C. L., Kravchenko, Y. S., Duran, A., Huffman, T., Morras, H., Studdert, G., Zhang, X., Cruse, R. M. and Yuan, X. 2012. Overview of Mollisols in the world: Distribution, land use and management. Can. J. Soil Sci. 92: 383â402. Mollisols â a.k.a., Black Soils or Prairie Soils â…
Farming and forestry are practices with clearly defined institutions, markets, and policies. These are not as clearly defined for agroforestry, a practice experiencing increased interest in the USA. This study examined the barriers preventing the adoption of agroforestry within a household level…
Perennial coolwater streams (maximum daily mean water temperature 20.7–24.6°C; 90th percentile annual exceedence flow≥0.0283m³/s) are common in the Laurentian Great Lakes region of North America, including the state of Wisconsin, but they lack specific and effective bioassessment tools. I used…
The state of Oregon’s (USA) land use planning framework has long been characterized by tensions between state and local authority, between traditionally-defined “urban” and “rural” concerns, and between the competing interests of various landowners. An examination of Wallowa County, Oregon’s…
SUMMARYPrescribed burning in forestry is a valuable land management tool that has been extensively used in Australia, Eurasia, and North America. Nevertheless, fire is inherently dangerous and may impose risk upon humans, properties, and other natural resources. With the case of southern United…
Controls on chemical weathering, such as bedrock geology, runoff, and temperature, are considered to be the primary drivers of Si transport from the continents to the oceans. However, recent work has highlighted terrestrial vegetation as an important control over Si cycling. Here we show that at…
Rapid land ownership changes in the Northern Forest of the eastern United States have spurred development as well as conservation. Local people have experienced differing degrees of participation in land use decisions. We examine two conservation projects from the Northern Forest state of Maine…