David Foster

• Harvard University

Plain Language Summary In the Northern Hemisphere, average temperatures decline with latitude as climates cool toward the pole. Changes in this temperature pattern have significant consequences for weather systems and ecosystems. Past changes likely impacted the geographic extent of summer warmth and winter freezing that can determine where tree sp...

Managing forests to mitigate climate change and increase their capacity to adapt to future climate-related disturbances and conditions typically involves protecting and enhancing forest carbon stocks and sequestration capacity while promoting structural diversity. While the focus has been on comparing active management approaches for meeting these...

A campaign is underway to clear established forests and expand early-successional habitats—also called young forest, pre-forest, early seral, or open habitats—with the intention of benefitting specific species. Coordinated by federal and state wildlife agencies, and funded with public money, public land managers work closely with hunting and forest...

Changes in vegetation in North America indicate Holocene shifts in the latitudinal temperature gradient along the western margin of the North Atlantic. The dynamics of tree taxa such as oak (Quercus) and hickory (Carya) showed opposing directions of change across different latitudes, consistent with changes in temperature gradients. Pollen-inferred...

This paleoenvironmental database features postglacial lake-sediment records from 31 study sites located across New England. The study sites span an environmental gradient from the cooler, northern and inland part of the region to the warmer, southern and coastal areas of New England. Sediment-core chronologies were determined using ¹⁴C dating, ²¹⁰P...

Ecosystems across the United States are changing in complex and unpredictable ways and analysis of these changes requires coordinated, long-term research. This paper is a product of a synthesis effort of the U.S. National Science Foundation funded Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) network addressing the LTER core research area of “populations an...

Long-term, place-based research programs in the National Science Foundation-supported Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network have had profound effects on public policies and practices in land use, conservation, and the environment. While less well known than their contributions to fundamental ecological science, LTER programs’ commitment to s...

How, where, and why carbon (C) moves into and out of an ecosystem through time are long‐standing questions in biogeochemistry. Here, we bring together hundreds of thousands of C‐cycle observations at the Harvard Forest in central Massachusetts, USA, a mid‐latitude landscape dominated by 80–120‐yr‐old closed‐canopy forests. These data answered four...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

Forest insects and pathogens have significant impacts on U.S. forests, annually affecting an area nearly three times that of wildfires and timber harvesting combined. However, coupled with these direct effects of forest insects and pathogens are the indirect impacts through influencing forest management practices, such as harvesting. In an earlier...

Reconstructions of prehistoric vegetation composition help establish natural baselines, variability, and trajectories of forest dynamics before and during the emergence of intensive anthropogenic land use. Pollen–vegetation models (PVMs) enable such reconstructions from fossil pollen assemblages using process-based representations of taxon-specific...

An increasingly accepted paradigm in conservation attributes valued modern ecological conditions to past human activities. Disturbances, including prescribed fire, are therefore used by land managers to impede forest development in many potentially wooded landscapes under the interpretation that openland habitats were created and sustained by human...

Although the conditions that render forests likely to support nonnative plants are well documented, there are surprisingly few data on the long-term dynamics of nonnative invasive species in eastern temperate forests. We examined 11 years of compositional and structural change in a small (60 ha) forest preserve in Connecticut with abundant invasive...

Forest insects and pathogens (FIPs) have significant impacts on U.S. forests, each year affecting an area nearly three times the area of wildfires and timber harvesting combined. We surveyed family forest owners (FFOs) in the northeastern U.S. and 84% of respondents indicated they would harvest in at least one of the presented FIP infestation scena...

Climate variations in the North Atlantic region can substantially impact surrounding continents. Notably, the Younger Dryas chronozone was named for the ecosystem effects of abrupt changes in the region at circa (ca.) 12.9–11.7 ka (millennia before 1950 AD). Holocene variations since then, however, have been hard to diagnose, and the responsiveness...

Forests in the eastern North America have changed progressively over the 11,700 years of the Holocene Epoch. To understand the dynamics involved, we focus on eastern hemlock ( Tsuga canadensis ), which shifted its distribution through time and, notably, exhibited a rapid range-wide decline at 5280±180 YBP. We consider how climate could have shaped...

In this paper we provided an incorrect citation and incomplete methodology for the identification of pollen grains of Pinus subgenus Pinus as either Pinus banksiana type or Pinus rigida type (which includes both P. rigida and Pinus resinosa). The citation given as McAndrews, Berti, and Norris () should have been given as Whitehead (). Following Whi...

Aim We analysed a dataset composed of multiple palaeoclimate and lake‐sediment pollen records from New England to explore how postglacial changes in the composition and spatial patterns of vegetation were controlled by regional‐scale climate change, a subregional environmental gradient, and landscape‐scale variations in soil characteristics. Locat...

Full text at: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Wlhl1L~GwCtID Disturbance events affect forest composition and structure across a range of spatial and temporal scales, and subsequent forest development may differ after natural, anthropogenic, or compound disturbances. Following large, natural disturbances, salvage logging is a common and often contr...

Wind disturbance generates heterogeneous microsite structures, including downed logs, windthrow mounds, and pits. While these structures can provide opportunities for regeneration of certain tree species, the long-term influence of microsites and microsite heterogeneity on forest development has not been quantified. We used long-term measurements o...

Nonrandom collecting practices may bias conclusions drawn from analyses of herbarium records. Recent efforts to fully digitize and mobilize regional floras online offer a timely opportunity to assess commonalities and differences in herbarium sampling biases. We determined spatial, temporal, trait, phylogenetic, and collector biases in c . 5 millio...

Pit and mound microtopography is an important structural component of most forests, influencing soil processes and habitat diversity. These features have diminished greatly in northeastern U.S. forests since European settlement, as a result of the history of repeated logging, land-clearance followed by reforestation, and the smaller size of trees (...

The Wildlands and Woodlands (W&W) vision calls for a 50-year effort to conserve 70 percent of New England as forest permanently free from development, plus at least 7 percent of New England as farmland. Through the leadership and commitment of landowners, these conserved lands will continue to power the region’s traditional land-based economy and p...

Non-random collecting practices may bias conclusions drawn from analyses of herbarium records. Recent efforts to fully digitize and mobilize regional floras offer a timely opportunity to assess commonalities and differences in herbarium sampling biases. We determined spatial, temporal, trait, phylogenetic, and collector biases in ∼5 million herbari...

Decadal-scale analyses of fungal spores in a lake-sediment core from Ware Pond, located in the town of Marblehead in northeastern Massachusetts, test the potential of this approach for reconstructing past sheep and cattle grazing in southern New England, USA. The influx of spores of Sordaria and other coprophilous taxa increases at ad 1650, which c...

The development of old-growth forests in northeastern North America has largely been within the context of gap-scale disturbances given the rarity of stand-replacing disturbances. Using the 10-ha old-growth Harvard Tract and its associated 90-year history of measurements, including detailed surveys in 1989 and 2009, we document the long-term struct...

The middle-Holocene decline of Tsuga canadensis (L.) Carrière (eastern hemlock) across eastern North America has been attributed to various causes, including the widespread outbreak of an insect pest, such as Lambdina fiscellaria (hemlock looper). We tested this hypothesis by searching for insect remains in sediment cores from Hemlock Hollow, a sma...

The development of old-growth forests in northeastern North America has largely been within the context of gap-scale disturbances given the rarity of stand-replacing disturbances. Using the 10-ha old-growth Harvard Tract and its associated 90-year history of measurements, including detailed surveys in 1989 and 2009, we document the long-term struct...

Historical extirpations have resulted in depauperate large herbivore assemblages in many northern forests. In eastern North America, most forests are inhabited by a single wild ungulate species, white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), and relationships between deer densities and impacts on forest regeneration are correspondingly well documented...

Anticipating landscape- to regional-scale impacts of land use on ecosystems and the services they provide is a central challenge for scientists, policymakers, and resource managers. Working with a panel of practitioners and regional experts, we developed and analyzed four plausible but divergent land-use scenarios that depict the future of Massachu...

Herbivory by deer is one of the leading biotic disturbances on forest understories (i.e., herbs, small shrubs, and small tree seedlings). A large body of research has reported declines in height, abundance, and reproductive capacity of forbs and woody plants coupled with increases in abundance of graminoids, ferns, and exotic species due to deer he...

Ungulates are leading drivers of plant communities worldwide, with impacts linked to animal density, disturbance and vegetation structure, and site productivity. Many ecosystems have more than one ungulate species; however, few studies have specifically examined the combined effects of two or more species on plant communities. We examined the exten...

We review and synthesize information on invasions of nonnative forest insects and diseases in the United States, including their ecological and economic impacts, pathways of arrival, distribution within the United States, and policy options for reducing future invasions. Nonnative insects have accumulated in United States forests at a rate of ∼2.5...

Nifedipine is a BCS Class II drug used for treatment of hypertension and preterm labor. Large inter-patient variability in nifedipine absorption results in variable exposure among different patients. We conducted in vitro dissolution studies to compare nifedipine dissolution from immediate release (IR) capsules with different volumes of dissolution...

Ungulate browsing in predator depleted North American landscapes is believed to be causing widespread tree recruitment failures. However, canopy disturbances and variations in ungulate densities are sources of heterogeneity that can buffer ecosystems against herbivory. Relatively little is known about the functional response (the rate of consumptio...

The use of ecological forestry to achieve management objectives, such as the maintenance of native biodiversity, has become increasingly common on public and private ownerships in North America. These approaches generally use natural disturbance processes and their structural and compositional outcomes as models for designing silvicultural prescrip...

The Harvard Forest in Massachusetts serves as Harvard University's 3,650. ac (1,477. ha) outdoor laboratory and classroom. The original and ongoing mission, the history of research and management since 1907, and a broad conservation vision published in 2005 all guide the current Land Use Master Plan. This university forest has three main land-use z...

In many parts of the eastern US, the provision of ecosystem services depends on private land. In these regions, decisions about land management and conservation made by private landowners can have significant effects on habitat and other ecosystem services. Advancing permanent conservation of land can be particularly challenging in dynamic rural-to...

Transparent reporting of all research is essential for assessing the validity of any study. Reporting guidelines are available and endorsed for many types of research but are lacking for clinical pharmacokinetic studies. Such tools promote the consistent reporting of a minimal set of information for end users, and facilitate knowledge translation o...

Department of Geography, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 550 North ParkStreet, Madison, WI 53706, USAThe influence of climate on forest change during thepast century in the eastern United States was evalu-ated in a recent paper (Nowacki & Abrams, 2014)that centers on an increase in ‘highly competitivemesophytic hardwoods’ (Nowacki & Abrams, 2008)an...

We report the impact of an extreme weather event, the O ctober 1987 severe storm, on fragmented woodlands in southern B ritain. We analysed ecological changes between 1971 and 2002 in 143 200‐m ² plots in 10 woodland sites exposed to the storm with an ecologically equivalent sample of 150 plots in 16 non‐exposed sites. Comparing both years, underst...

Protected areas (PAs) are an important component of the global conservation strategy and understanding the past drivers of land protection can inform future conservation planning. Socioeconomic and policy drivers of protection vary through time and space, but a lack of spatio-temporal data limit the ability to conduct retrospective analyses of PAs....

Literature has shown that chronic pain patients prescribed opioids are at an increased risk for experiencing drug-drug interactions as a result of polypharmacy. In addition, chronic, noncancer pain patients who experience drug-drug interactions have been shown to have greater health care utilization and costs. However, no study has focused on the h...

Kalmia latifolia has declined in southern New England and other parts of its range in recent decades. This long-term decline is generally attributed to abiotic forces (i.e., low light levels in maturing forests) with little attention to the possible role that top-down effects from ungulate herbivory may be playing. We examined the extent to which m...

The study of transporter-mediated drug-drug interactions (DDI) requires use of appropriate probes to reflect transporter function. Digoxin is often used as a probe in DDI studies involving P-glycoprotein (P-gp) and is recommended by FDA for this purpose, despite several lingering questions regarding suitability of digoxin as P-gp probe. This review...

The Eastern Hemlock, massive and majestic, has played a unique role in structuring Northeastern forest environments, from Nova Scotia to Wisconsin and through the Appalachian Mountains to North Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama. A "foundation species" influencing all the species in the ecosystem surrounding it, this iconic North American tree has lo...

A decline of hemlock (Tsuga) populations at ca 5.5 ka (thousands of calibrated radiocarbon years before 1950 AD) stands out as the most abrupt vegetation change of the Holocene in North America, but remains poorly understood after decades of study. Recent analyses of fossil pollen have revealed a concurrent, abrupt oak (Quercus) decline and increas...

To better understand how forest management, phenology, vegetation type, and actual and simulated climatic change affect seasonal and inter-annual variations in soil respiration (R-s), we analyzed more than 100,000 individual measurements of soil respiration from 23 studies conducted over 22 years at the Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts, U...

The northeastern United States is a predominately-forested region that, like most of the eastern U.S., has undergone a 400-year history of intense logging, land clearance for agriculture, and natural reforestation. This setting affords the opportunity to address a major ecological question: How similar are today's forests to those existing prior to...

Maps of relative abundance and change for all taxa. (ZIP)

We explored the middle-Holocene decline of Tsuga canadensis by measuring the diameters of pollen grains in two lake-sediment cores from New England. We hypothesized that a drop in pollen size at the time of the decline followed by an increase in pollen diameters as Tsuga recovered during the late Holocene might indicate reduced abundance of Tsuga i...

Wind disturbance profoundly shapes temperate forests but few studies have evaluated patterns and mechanisms of long‐term forest dynamics following major windthrows. In 1990, we initiated a large hurricane simulation experiment in a 0.8‐ha manipulation (pulldown) and 0.6‐ha control area of a maturing Quercus rubra – Acer rubrum forest in New England...

Background/Question/Methods Hidden in the New England forest are thousands of artifacts of human activity. Cellar holes reflect old house and barn foundations; stone walls mark property lines and agricultural fields; wolf trees disclose the whereabouts of pastures long overgrown; mill dams by the hundreds lay tumbled on the banks of rivers and fo...

Background/Question/Methods Scenario studies have emerged as a powerful approach for synthesizing diverse forms of research and articulating and evaluating alternative socioecological futures. Unlike predictive modeling, scenarios do not attempt to forecast the precise or probable state of any variable at a given point in the future. Instead, com...

Climate proxy records and general circulation models suggest that Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) plays a key role for global climate changes. Paleoceanographic data document multiple episodes of prominent AMOC weakening during the early Holocene. However, proxy records at adjacent continents have not been demonstrated to fully c...

The US Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network enters its fourth decade with a distinguished record of achievement in ecological science. The value of long-term observations and experiments has never been more important for testing ecological theory and for addressing today's most difficult environmental challenges. The network's potential for...

Scenario studies have emerged as a powerful approach for synthesizing diverse forms of research and for articulating and evaluating alternative socioecological futures. Unlike predictive modeling, scenarios do not attempt to forecast the precise or probable state of any variable at a given point in the future. Instead, comparisons among a set of co...

Hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) plays a unique role in Eastern forests, producing distinctive biogeochemical, habitat, and microclimatic conditions and yet has begun a potentially irreversible decline due to the invasive hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae; HWA) that causes foliar damage, crown loss, and mortality of host trees. Understanding the reg...

The abrupt, range-wide decline of Tsuga canadensis ~5500 calibrated years before present (cal. yr BP) is one of the most-studied events in North American paleoecology. Little attention, however, has been given to an earlier Tsuga decline, dated to ~6000 cal. yr BP in southern Ontario, Canada. To investigate whether this event occurred elsewhere in...

Economic and political realities present challenges for implementing an aggressive climate change abatement program in the United States. A high-efficiency approach will be essential. In this synthesis, we compare carbon budgets and evaluate the carbon-mitigation potential for nine counties in the northeastern United States that represent a range o...

Analyses of a sediment core from Little Pond, located in the town of Bolton, Massachusetts, provide new insights into the history of environmental and ecological changes in southern New England during the late Holocene. Declines in organic content and peaks in the abundance of Isoetes spores indicate reduced water depth at 2900–2600, 2200–1800, and...

Land use and climate change have complex and interacting effects on naturally dynamic forest landscapes. To anticipate and adapt to these changes, it is necessary to understand their individual and aggregate impacts on forest growth and composition. We conducted a simulation experiment to evaluate regional forest change in Massachusetts, USA over t...

Pharmacokinetic drug-drug interactions (DDIs) involving opioid analgesics can be problematic. Opioids are widely used, have a narrow therapeutic index, and can be associated with severe toxicity. The purpose of this review is to describe pharmacokinetic DDIs associated with opioids frequently encountered in managed care settings (morphine, codeine,...

Background/Question/Methods The growing body of research on socio-ecological challenges such as climate and land use change has great potential to inform and even transform public and government opinion. When research sites produce synthesis publications to engage a general and professional audience, a formal communications strategy is needed to...

Background/Question/Methods Urban Metabolism - the transport and transformation of matter and energy in cities - is a conceptual framework by which we are investigating coupling of human and natural systems in metropolitan Boston, from its urban core to rural hinterlands. Within this framework, our exploratory research analyzes carbon as a central...

Background/Question/Methods: PALEON (the PaleoEcological Observatory Network) is an interdisciplinary team of paleoecologists, ecological statisticians, and ecosystem modelers with the goals of reconstructing forest composition, fire regime and climate in forests across the northeastern US over the past 2000 years and applying these reconstructions...

Background/Question/Methods Interdisciplinary collaborations are essential for a research agenda on earth stewardship. In addition, researchers must develop fruitful interactions with policy makers, managers and the public to put planet earth on a path toward sustainability. We must acknowledge the fact that the human population will continue to gr...

Background/Question/Methods The LTER network is committed to integrated socio-ecological research designed to foster a sustainable future. Overarching questions include: How will global change alter the futures of regional social-ecological systems? And, how and why do regional social-ecological systems differ in vulnerability, resilience and ada...

Background/Question/Methods Over the past 300 years New England, and most of the Eastern U.S., has undergone a remarkable transformation. Following an early history of deforestation and agriculture, the region reforested naturally in the late 1800s when broad-scale agriculture shifted westward and New England industrialized. Today, forest covers...

Background/Question/Methods The question of what is “natural” and its consequences for conservation and ecosystem management in New England have long been debated. For example, the prevalence of nut-bearing trees, including oak, hickory, and chestnut, has been interpreted as being promoted by Native American activities. Likewise, the origins of p...

Broad-scale patterns of vegetation response to three centuries of human disturbance in the northeastern United States are well understood, but stand-scale (0.1–10ha) interactions between land-use history and the ecological processes underlying these patterns are not. Enduring legacies of land-use history, though pervasive in modern forests, are not...

The landforms, vegetation, water chemistry, and stratigraphy of four patterned fens (aapamires) in western Labrador and adjacent Quebec are described in a study investigating the origin and characteristics of surface patterns on northern peatlands. Phytosociological analysis by the relevé approach, in conjunction with analysis by TWINSPAN, is used...

A floristic analysis of the forest vegetation of southeastern Labrador was conducted using the phytosociological methods of Braun-Blanquet and a phytosociological table was constructed with the FORTRAN program TWINSPAN, which produces hierarchical classifications by two-way indicator species analysis. A total of 88 relevés incorporating 77 species...

The fire history of the wilderness of southeastern Labrador is marked by a patchy distribution of large fires in time and space. During the 110-year period encompassed by this study, major fires occurred in four decades, 1870–1879, 1890–1899, 1950–1959, 1970–1979. From 1900 to 1951 only 1125 km2 burned; this represents approximately 10% of the tota...

More accurate projections of future carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere and associated climate change depend on improved scientific understanding of the terrestrial carbon cycle. Despite the consensus that U.S. terrestrial ecosystems provide a carbon sink, the size, distribution, and interannual variability of this sink remain uncertain...

The US Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network enters its fourth decade with a distinguished record of achievement in ecological science. The value of long-term observations and experiments has never been more important for testing ecological theory and for addressing today's most difficult environmental challenges. The network's potential for...

1. The long-term history of Quercus in southern Scandinavia has received little attention despite its important role in modern conservation. In this study the 4000-year dynamics of Quercus, its habitat and other important taxa were analysed with pollen data from 25 small hollows and 6 regional sites across southern Scandinavia. The aim was to provi...

To assess the impact of an elective clinical research course on second- and third-year pharmacy students' knowledge of clinical research methods, training programs, career options, and interest in pursuing postgraduate training. A 2-credit hour elective course in clinical research was designed that included lectures, discussions, workshops, and in-...

Analyses of pollen, charcoal and organic content in a lake sediment core from Wildwood Lake, Long Island, New York, provide insights into the ecological and environmental history of this region. The early Holocene interval of the record (ca. 9800–8800 cal. a BP) indicates the presence of Pinus rigida–Quercus ilicifolia woodlands with high fire acti...

Background/Question/Methods There are remarkably few rigorous, long-term evaluations of how forestry and conservation-management practices affect forests in the eastern United States. Managers frequently conduct operations to control forest structure or composition, improve wildlife habitat, remove invasive species, or influence biogeochemical pro...

Background/Question/Methods One of the most abrupt vegetation changes in North America during the Holocene is the Tsuga (hemlock) decline at ca. ~5.3 ka, which is associated with sharp decreases in hemlock pollen abundance from Michigan to Maine. The decline was initially attributed to a disease or insect outbreak because of 1) the range-wide abrup...

1. Problem statement – Foundation species define and structure ecological systems. In forests around the world, foundation tree species are declining due to overexploitation, pests and pathogens. Eastern hemlock ( Tsuga canadensis ), a foundation tree species in eastern North America, is threatened by an exotic insect, the hemlock woolly adelgid (...

The objective of this article is to describe adverse drug events related to the liver and gastrointestinal tract in critically ill patients. PubMed and other resources were used to identify information related to drug-induced acute liver failure, gastrointestinal hypomotility, constipation, diarrhea, gastrointestinal bleeding, and pancreatitis in c...

Moose have recently re-colonized the temperate forests of southern New England, raising questions about this herbivore's effect on forest dynamics in the region. We quantifi ed Moose foraging selectivity and intensity on tree species in rela-tion to habitat features in central Massachusetts. Acer rubrum (Red Maple) and Tsuga canadensis (Eastern Hem...

The hemlock woolly adelgid (HWAAdelges tsugae Annand) is an introduced insect pest that threatens to decimate eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis (L.) Carriere) populations. In this study, we used the ecosystem demography model in conjunction with a stochastic model of HWA spread to predict the impact of HWA infestation on the current and future fore...

Forests in Southeast Asia are important sources of timber and other forest products, of local energy for cooking and heading, and potentially as sources of bioenergy. Many of these forests have experienced deforestation and forest degradation over the last few decades. The potential flow of woody biomass for bioenergy from forests is uncertain and...

Purpose: To characterize the history of the ACCP GI/Liver/Nutrition PRN as part of the 30 year anniversary celebration of the College, including the founding of the PRN, highlights of the PRN’s mission and values, and contributions of the PRN to the College and the profession. Methods: Input and historical information was solicited from PRN membe...

Other Research Unit Analyses of a sediment core from Highstead Swamp in southwestern Connecticut, USA reveal late-glacial and early-Holocene ecological and hydrological changes. Late-glacial pollen assemblages are dominated by Picea and Pinus subg. Pinus, and the onset of the Younger Dryas (YD) cold interval is evidenced by higher abundance of Abie...

Background/Question/Methods Massachusetts’ forests continue to accrue biomass in the wake of widespread agricultural land abandonment dating to the late nineteenth century. The future contribution of these forests to the Eastern U.S. carbon sink will be constrained by chronic but unknown rates of urban and suburban development. We simulated futu...

Question: Hurricanes and cyclones cause a wide range of damage to coastal forests worldwide. Most of these storms are not catastrophic in ecological terms, but forest responses to storms of moderate intensities are poorly understood. In regions with a high frequency of moderate hurricanes, how does variation in disturbance intensity affect the magn...