Pecologix Political Ecology Blotter

The discovery of emerald ash borer (EAB) in Dutchess County, directly across the Hudson River from a large infestation found two years ago in the City of Kingston and its vicinity, has been confirmed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS). This marks the first discovery of EAB east of [...]

Understanding the causes and consequences of wildfires in forests of the western United States requires integrated information about fire, climate changes, and human activity on multiple temporal scales. We use sedimentary charcoal accumulation rates to construct long-term variations in fire during the past 3,000 y in the American West and compare this record to independent [...]

5. Under the ‘business as usual’ scenario, population models projected a 90% decline in the size of tapped and untapped populations within 50 years and a 50% decline in frankincense yield within 15 years. Model simulations for restoration scenarios revealed that populations and frankincense production could only be sustained with intensive management leading to full sapling [...]

Oak trees “produce huge, abundant amounts one year and not in other years,” Dr. Ashton said. “I don’t think it’s bad — the whole system fluctuates like this.”One theory for why oak trees vary their acorn yield is the so-called predator satiation hypothesis. Under this theory, during bumper years, the trees litter the forest floor [...]

The World Climate Research Programme, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme, the International Human Dimensions Programme, and DIVERSITAS: An International Programme of Biodiversity Science, will form part of an integrated strategy on researching environmental change that will include social sciences.Together they will work under a single framework for global environmental change research, to be known as the [...]

Dutch elm disease (DED) has spread through Europe and North America since the beginning of the twentieth century. In response, several independent genetic improvement programmes for breeding DED-resistant elms have been established on both sides of the Atlantic. Assimilating a wide range of resistant clones of different parentage should help ensure survival of the elm [...]

We used a tree-ring chronology as a proxy for annual area burned (AAB) in the northern Rockies, USA during AD 1626–2008. We correlated annual ring widths of alpine larch trees (Larex lyallii) sampled at a single high-elevation site in western Montana with AAB for the United States Forest Region 1. Radial growth was significantly associated [...]