Description: Three experiments were conducted to investigate the effect of paclobutrazol on shoot and cambial growth of nine tree species located in Indiana and Louisiana, U.S. In Experiment I, white oak (Quercus alba L.) and red oak (Q. rubra L.) in Indiana were treated in April 1995 with paclobutrazol using the soil drench method. In Experiment II, paclobutrazol was applied in April 1996, usi...

--Sweetgum and water oak trees samp~ed from a plantation over 7 years were used to test whether primary tree component (bole wood, bole bark, limb wood, timb bark, and leaves) predictions could be summed to estima~e total bole. total limb. and total tree values. Estimattons by summing primary component predictions were not significantly different from predictions for the totals, but pr~diction ...

Fire suppression allows tree species that are intolerant of fire stress to increase their distribution, potentially resulting in disruption of historical species-environmental relationships. To measure changes between historical General Land Office surveys (1815 to 1850) and current USDA Forest Inventory and Assessment surveys (2004 to 2008), we compared composition, distribution, and site fact...

—Oak (Quercus spp.) stump sprouts are vital to sustaining oak’s presence and long-term dominance when regenerating oak or mixed-hardwood forests in southern Indiana. A study was initiated on the Hoosier National Forest in southern Indiana in 1987 to predict the sprouting potential and dominance probability of oaks. Before clearcut harvesting, we sampled 2,188 trees of fi ve oak species and meas...

Oak decline, the precipitous mortality of mature oak trees, has been a chronic problem in xeric oak ecosystems and is reaching unprecedented levels in red oak group (Quercus section Lobatae) species in the Ozark Highlands. The high rates of mortality are leading to rapid changes in species composition, forest structure, and related changes in fire risk, insect populations, and colonization patt...

Stormwater management that relies on ecosystem processes, such as tree canopy interception and rhizosphere biology, can be difficult to achieve in built environments because urban land is costly and urban soil inhospitable to vegetation. Yet such systems offer a potentially valuable tool for achieving both sustainable urban forests and stormwater management. We evaluated tree water uptake and r...

Wild pigs (Sus scrofa) have been widely distributed by humans and significant populations now occur in oak-dominated ecosystems in California. Because they are omnivorous and forage by rooting, wild pigs have the potential to impact a wide variety of plants and animals directly by consumption and indirectly through disturbance. In 1998, we initiated a long-term study of the ecological effects o...