Other Forestry and Forest Sciences Commons^™

Residential Building Energy Conservation And Avoided Power Plant Emissions By Urban And Community Trees In The United States, David J. Nowak, Nathaniel Appleton, Alexis Ellis, Eric Greenfield

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Urban trees and forests alter building energy use and associated emissions from power plants by shading buildings, cooling air temperatures and altering wind speeds around buildings. Field data on urban trees were combined with local urban/community tree and land cover maps, modeling of tree effects on building energy use and pollutant emissions, and state energy and pollutant costs to estimate tree effects on building energy use and associated pollutant emissions at the state to national level in the conterminous United States. Results reveal that trees and forests in urban/community areas in the conterminous United States annually reduce electricity use by …

Global Synthesis Of The Classifications, Distributions, Benefits And Issues Of Terracing, Wei Wei, Die Chen, Lixin Wang, Stefani Daryanto, Liding Chen, Yang Yu, Yonglong Lu, Ge Sun, Tianjiao Feng

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

For thousands of years, humans have created different types of terraces in different sloping conditions, meant to mitigate flood risks, reduce soil erosion and conserve water. These anthropogenic landscapes can be found in tropical and subtropical rainforests, deserts, and arid and semiarid mountains across the globe. Despite the long history, the roles of and the mechanisms by which terracing improves ecosystem services (ESs) remain poorly understood. Using literature synthesis and quantitative analysis, the worldwide types, distributions, major benefits and issues of terracing are presented in this review. A key terracing indicator, defined as the ratio of different ESs under terraced …

Integrating Biodiversity And Drinking Water Protection Goals Through Geographic Analysis, James D. Wickham, Curtis H. Flather

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Aim Biodiversity and drinking water share a common interest in land conservation. Our objective was to identify where that common interest occurs geographically to inform conservation planning.

Location The study focused on 2112 eight-digit hydrologic units (watersheds) occurring in the conterminous United States.

Methods Data on aquatic-dependent species occurrence, drinking water intakes, protected land status and land cover change were compiled for each watershed. We compared these four datasets after defining ‘hotspots’ based on attribute-specific thresholds that included (1) the 90th percentile of at-risk aquatic biodiversity, (2) with and without drinking water intakes, (3) above and below the median percentage …

Climate Change On The Shoshone National Forest, Wyoming: A Synthesis Of Past Climate, Climate Projections, And Ecosystem Implications, Janine Rice, Andrew Tredennick, Linda A. Joyce

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

The Shoshone National Forest (Shoshone) covers 2.4 million acres of mountainous topography in northwest Wyoming and is a vital ecosystem that provides clean water, wildlife habitat, timber, grazing, recreational opportunities, and aesthetic value. The Shoshone has experienced and adapted to changes in climate for many millennia, and is currently experiencing a warming trend that is expected to accelerate in the next century. Climate change directly and indirectly affects the Shoshone’s high-elevation, mountainous terrain that supports unique and sometimes rare ecological components. Several vulnerable and very responsive resources and processes on the Shoshone could interact to produce unforeseeable or undesirable ecosystem …