Three erosion models, the Universal Soil Loss Equation for Forestry (USLE-Forest), the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation Version 2 (RUSLE2), and the Water Erosion Prediction Project for Forest Roads (WEPP-Road), were ...

Quantification of biophysical parameters of urban trees is important for urban planning, and for assessing carbon sequestration and ecosystem services. Airborne lidar has been used extensively in recent years to estimate ...

The objective of this study was to determine whether leaf area index (LAI) in temperate mixed forests is best estimated using multiple-return airborne laser scanning (lidar) data or dual-band, single-pass interferometric synthetic aperture radar data (from GeoSAR) alone, or both in combination. In situ measurements of LAI were made using the LiCor LAI-2000 Plant Canopy Analyzer on 61 plots (21 hardwood, 36 pine, 4 mixed pine hardwood; stand age ranging from 12-164 years; mean height ranging from 0.4 to 41.2 m) in the Appomattox-Buckingham State Forest, Virginia, USA. Lidar distributional metrics were calculated for all returns and for ten one meter deep crown density slices (a new metric), five above and five below the mode of the vegetation returns for each plot. GeoSAR metrics were calculated from the X-band backscatter coefficients (four looks) as well as both X- and P-band interferometric heights and magnitudes for each plot. Lidar metrics alone explained 69% of the variability in LAI, while GeoSAR metrics alone explained 52%. However, combining the lidar and GeoSAR metrics increased the R² to 0.77 with a CV-RMSE of 0.42. This study indicates the clear potential for X-band backscatter and interferometric height (both now available from spaceborne sensors), when combined with small-footprint lidar data, to improve LAI estimation in temperate mixed forests....

Microarray gene expression profiling is a powerful technique to understand complex developmental processes, but making biologically meaningful inferences from such studies has always been challenging. We previously reported ...

The NST 3.0 mechanistic nutrient uptake model was used to explore P uptake to a depth of 120 cm over a 126 d growing season in simulated buffer communities composed of mixtures of cottonwood (Populus deltoids Bartr.), ...

Protection from hydrological extremes and the sustainable supply of hydrological services in the presence of changing climate and lifestyles as well as rocketing population pressure in many parts of the world are the ...

There is no scientific consensus about how dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in surface waters is regulated. Here we combine recent literature data from 49 catchments with detailed stream and catchment process information ...

Background Switchgrass is one of the most promising bioenergy crop candidates for the US. It gives relatively high biomass yield and can grow on marginal lands. However, its yields vary from year to year and from location ...

Background High-throughput re-sequencing is rapidly becoming the method of choice for studies of neutral and adaptive processes in natural populations across taxa. As re-sequencing the genome of large numbers of samples ...