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Lisa A. McCauley

The future of dry forests around the world is uncertain given predictions that rising temperatures and enhanced aridity will increase drought-induced tree mortality. Using forest management and ecological restoration to reduce density and competition for water offers one of the few pathways that forests managers can potentially minimize drought-induced tree mortality. Competition for water during drought leads to elevated tree mortality in dense stands, although the influence of density on heat-induced stress and the durations of hot or dry conditions that most impact mortality remain unclear. Understanding how competition interacts with hot-drought stress is essential to recognize how, where and how much reducing...
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Drought-induced tree mortality is predicted to increase in dry forests across the globe as future projections show hotter, drier climates. This could potentially result in large-scale tree die-offs, changes in species composition, and loss of forest ecosystem services, including carbon storage. While some studies have found that forest stands with greater basal areas (BA) have higher drought mortality, many have not evaluated the extent to which forests restored to lower densities via restoration activities affect drought mortality. The southwestern USA is particularly susceptible to tree mortality due to the predicted increases in temperature, drier soils, and forests with high density. Our objective was to evaluate...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
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Many waterbird species utilize a diversity of aquatic habitats; however, with increasing anthropogenic needs tomanage water regimes there is global concern over impacts to waterbird populations. The federally threatened pipingplover (Charadrius melodus; hereafter plovers) is a shorebird that breeds in three habitat types in the Prairie PotholeRegion of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Canada: riverine sandbars; reservoir shorelines; and prairie wetlands. Watersurface areas of these habitats fluctuate in response to wet–dry periods; decreasing water surface areas exposeshorelines that plovers utilize for nesting. Climate varies across the region so when other habitats are unavailable forplover nesting because of flooding,...
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Many waterbird species utilize a diversity of aquatic habitats; however, with increasing anthropogenic needs tomanage water regimes there is global concern over impacts to waterbird populations. The federally threatened pipingplover (Charadrius melodus; hereafter plovers) is a shorebird that breeds in three habitat types in the Prairie PotholeRegion of North Dakota, South Dakota, and Canada: riverine sandbars; reservoir shorelines; and prairie wetlands. Watersurface areas of these habitats fluctuate in response to wet–dry periods; decreasing water surface areas exposeshorelines that plovers utilize for nesting. Climate varies across the region so when other habitats are unavailable forplover nesting because of flooding,...
Increasing fire severity and warmer, drier postfire conditions are making forests in the western United States (West) vulnerable to ecological transformation. Yet, the relative importance of and interactions between these drivers of forest change remain unresolved, particularly over upcoming decades. Here, we assess how the interactive impacts of changing climate and wildfire activity influenced conifer regeneration after 334 wildfires, using a dataset of postfire conifer regeneration from 10,230 field plots. Our findings highlight declining regeneration capacity across the West over the past four decades for the eight dominant conifer species studied. Postfire regeneration is sensitive to high-severity fire, which...
Categories: Publication; Types: Citation
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