Tag: forest ecosystems

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Urban Forests: Environmental Benefits

Environmental Benefits of Urban Trees
Shade is one of many environmental benefits trees provide.

Urban forests are made up of the trees that exist in urban or suburban landscapes. An urban forest is comprised of trees in many settings – in residential and commercial landscapes, along streets and other rights-of-way, and in parks, greenways and set-aside natural areas.  Urban forests have great environmental, economic and social value.

Urban forests can moderate the impacts of urban air pollutants.  Trees remove particulates, sulfur dioxide, ozone and other …

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Water Balance

Adapted from: Mary Nichols. 2007. Chapter 3: Hydrologic Processes in Riparian Areas. In: G. Zaimes (ed). Understanding Arizona’s Riparian Areas. University of Arizona Cooperative Extension. AZ 1432. Available at http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/natresources/az1432.pdf

Water balance is a method of book keeping used to summarize the amount of water cycling from the atmosphere, across land surfaces, into the ground, through plants, into the ocean, and back the atmosphere. It provides a good framework for understanding hydrologic processes. Water balances can vary year to …

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Invasive Species in Forests

invasive
The kudzu vine, pictured here growing on trees in Atlanta, Georgia, is an invasive species brought to the United States from Japan and initially planted in the South to control erosion. Photo: Scott Ehardt, Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

A primary goal of a forest owner is to have a healthy forest. To most forest owners, a healthy forest means healthy, living trees. Indeed, inspecting your trees regularly is important. However, to maintain a healthy, thriving forest, you must take other …

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Plantation Forests and Climate Change

Written by Amy Grotta, University of Oregon

 

Plantation forests are a type of managed forest in which the trees are planted (as opposed to naturally regenerated), of the same age and generally of the same species, and are intended to maximize the production of wood fiber. Trees in a plantation forest are usually planted uniformly in rows to maximize the site’s growing space and resources, to ensure uniform growth, and to facilitate the use of mechanized harvesting equipment.

Figure 1.
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The Hydrologic Cycle

Adapted from: Mary Nichols. 2007. Chapter 3: Hydrologic Processes in Riparian Areas. In: G. Zaimes (ed). Understanding Arizona’s Riparian Areas. University of Arizona Cooperative Extension. AZ 1432. Available at http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/natresources/az1432.pdf

The hydrologic cycle, or water cycle (Fig. 1), explains how water is moved from the earth to the atmosphere. Water moves to the atmosphere as water vapor through evaporation and transpiration. It condenses and falls to the earth’s surface as precipitation. Water then either travels across land surfaces in watersheds …

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Oak Decline

Written by D.J. Moorehead and G.K. Douce for Forest Encyclopedia Network

Causal Agents

Oak decline is the name given to a slow-acting disease complex stemming from interactions between biotic and abiotic stressors of oaks (Quercus spp.). Abiotic factors that contribute to oak decline include tree maturity, low site productivity, drought, and spring frost. Biotic factors include root diseases such as Armillaria root disease (Fig. 1) (Armillaria spp.), canker causing fungi such as Hypoxylon canker (Fig. 2) …

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Sudden Oak Death in the Eastern United States

  Adapted from: D.J. Moorhead and G.K. Douce for Forest Encyclopedia Network     

 

Sudden oak death, caused by the pathogen Phytophthora ramorum, is a potentially devastating disease. P. ramorum has been found in nurseries in California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, and more recently in the eastern United States. Sudden oak death causes leaf and shoot blights in most hosts, and is known as Ramorum shoot and leaf blight in the nursery industry. In the forest the fungus can cause bole

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Landowners Can Apply Strategies to Help Forests Adapt to Climate Change

Photo 1: Forest trees get ready for fall on top of Mt. Lemmon in Arizona. Photo credit: Martha Gebhardt.

By Martha Gebhardt, School of Natural Resources and the Environment, University of Arizona

 

Forest vulnerability is expected to increase in decades to come, according to a draft of the National Climate Assessment released in January of 2013. The report stated that as temperatures continue to rise, droughts, insect outbreaks, and wildfires would all occur more regularly. The forestry chapter of …

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Watersheds and Vegetation

Adapted from: Mary Nichols. 2007. Chapter 4: Stream processes in riparian areas. In: G. Zaimes (ed). Understanding Arizona’s Riparian Areas. University of Arizona Cooperative Extension. AZ 1432. Available at http://cals.arizona.edu/pubs/natresources/az1432.pdf
Figure 1. Vegetation found in watersheds can influence channel formation. Trees and fine-stemmed vegetation, such as grasses, influence how water flows, sediment deposition, and channel roughness. Photo by Chris Evans, River to River CWMA. Image courtesy of forestryimages.org.

The relatively dense stands of vegetation found along channels form in response …

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Purple Loosestrife-Lythrum salicaria

Written by D.J. Moorhead and G.K. Douce for Forest Encyclopedia Network
Figure 1. Purple loosestrife is easily recognized in the summer and early fall by its showy spike of purple flowers. Photo by Eric Coombs, Oregon Department of Agriculture, courtesy of forestryimages.org

Purple Loosestrife is a tall, perennial forb that can grow up to 10 feet in height. It is easily distinguished by the abundant, showy spikes of purple flowers that occur at the tops of the plants (Swearingen et …

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