Erica A H Smithwick

• Oregon State University, PhD
• Professor (Associate) at Pennsylvania State University

Plain Language Summary Individuals, organizations, businesses, and governments face difficult choices about how to adapt to the changing climate. Research can help by, for example, providing insights about future climate conditions or showing how potential courses of action may play out under those conditions. But like all decisions, climate adapta...

We explored the linkages between socioeconomic and demographic factors, relocation preference, and settlement associated with China’s Poverty Alleviation Relocation Program. Using multivariate ordinal logistic regression, panel data modeling, and multilevel methods, we found that outdated infrastructure at places of origin, such as long distances t...

Background Prescribed burning is a beneficial fire management practice used by practitioners worldwide to meet multiple land management objectives, including reduction of wildfire hazard, promotion of biodiversity, and management of vegetation for wildlife and human interests. Meeting these objectives can be difficult due to the need for institutio...

Context Climate change is altering suitable habitat distributions of many species at high latitudes. Fleshy fruit-producing plants (hereafter, “berry plants”) are important in arctic food webs and as subsistence resources for human communities, but their response to a warming and increasingly variable climate at a landscape scale has not yet been e...

Sustainability competencies enable planners, the public, local communities, academics, and development practitioners to address environmental challenges, better envision the future and devise practical solutions. A key competency in this framework is Systems Thinking, allowing individuals to think comprehensively at different temporal and spatial s...

Firescapes of the Mid-Atlantic are understudied compared to other ecosystems in the United States, and little is known about the acceptance of prescribed fire as a forest management tool. Yet, this region harbors high levels of wildland-urban interface (WUI), has a close intermingling of land ownerships, and reflects substantial regional heterogene...

Climate risks are growing. Research is increasingly important to inform the design of strategies to manage these risks. But the relevance of many research studies to real- world decisions can be limited due to misalignment of values. There is no value-neutral strategy assessment, and the values assumed (often implicitly) within research need not al...

Context Landscape and local factors govern tree regeneration across heterogeneous post-fire forest environments. But their relative influence is unclear—limiting the degree that managers can consider landscape context when delegating resources to help stand-replacing patches restock successfully. Objectives We investigated how landscape and local...

Emerald ash borer (EAB; Agrilus planipennis Farimaire) has been found in 35 US states and five Canadian provinces. This invasive beetle is causing widespread mortality to ash trees (Fraxinus spp.), which are an important timber product and ornamental tree, as well as a cultural resource for some Tribes. The damage will likely continue despite effor...

ContextDistance to seed source is often used to estimate seed dispersal—a process needed for post-fire tree recovery. However, distance, especially in mountainous terrain, does not capture pattern or scale-dependent effects controlling seed supply and delivery. Measuring seed source pattern (area and arrangement) could provide insights on how these...

Malnutrition linked to poor quality diets affects at least 2 billion people. Forests, as well as agricultural systems linked to trees, are key sources of dietary diversity in rural settings. In the present article, we develop conceptual links between diet diversity and forested landscape mosaics within the rural tropics. First, we summarize the sta...

The social barriers and opportunities of prescribed fire management practices in the mid-Atlantic region are unknown. We hypothesized that there are mismatches between community perceptions of prescribed fire operations in the mid-Atlantic U.S. and the realities of its current and potential use in landscape management, but that these mismatches var...

Context Resilience is a concept central to the field of ecology, but our understanding of resilience is not sufficient to predict when and where large changes in species composition might occur following disturbances, particularly under climate change. Objectives Our objective was to estimate how wind disturbance shapes landscape-level patterns of...

Root zone soil moisture (RZSM) affects many natural processes and is an important component of environmental modeling, but it is expensive and challenging to monitor for relatively small spatial extents. Satellite datasets offer ample spatial coverage of near-surface soil moisture content at up to a daily time-step, but satellite-derived data produ...

Indigenous forests represent South Africa’s smallest biome, yet they are critical spaces for aligning sustainable development goals with carbon mitigation activities and conservation. The objectives of this study were to quantify the productivity and biodiversity of coastal lowland forests in the Dwesa Cwebe nature reserve in the Eastern Cape Provi...

We provide an overview of a transdisciplinary project about sustainable forest management under climate change. Our project is a partnership with members of the Menominee Nation, a Tribal Nation located in northern Wisconsin, United States. We use immersive virtual experiences, translated from ecosystem model outcomes, to elicit human values about...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0205296.].

Context Predicting ecosystem resilience is a challenge, especially as climate change alters disturbance regimes and conditions for recovery. Recent research has highlighted the importance of spatially-explicit disturbance and resilience processes to long-term ecosystem dynamics. “Neoecological” approaches characterize resilience mechanisms at relat...

With growing public awareness that wetlands are important to society, there are intensifying efforts to understand the ecological condition of those wetlands that remain, and to develop indicators of wetland condition. Indicators based on soils are not well developed and are absent in some current assessment protocols; these could be advantageous,...

Atmospheric deposition of nitrogen (N) influences forest demographics and carbon (C) uptake through multiple mechanisms that vary among tree species. Prior studies have estimated the effects of atmospheric N deposition on temperate forests by leveraging forest inventory measurements across regional gradients in deposition. However, in the United St...

Species-level sample characteristics and summarized results. (XLSX)

Full survival equations. (PDF)

Full growth equations. (PDF)

Parameters for each species model. (XLSX)

Species relationships between atmospheric deposition and growth and survival. (PDF)

Aim Cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) is notorious for creating positive feedbacks that facilitate vegetation type conversion within sagebrush steppe ecosystems in the western United States. Similar dynamics may exist in adjacent lower montane forest. However, fire‐forest‐cheatgrass dynamics have not been examined. We used species distribution modeling...

Herbivores can profoundly influence plant species assembly, including plant invasion, and resulting community composition. Population increases of native herbivores, e.g. white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), combined with burgeoning plant invasions raise concerns for native plant diversity and forest regeneration. While individual researcher...

Two forms of interactive video were assessed in an online course focused on conservation. The hypothesis was that interactive video enhances student perceptions about learning and improves mental models of social-ecological systems. Results showed that students reported greater learning and attitudes toward the subject following interactive video....

In recent decades, the Asian tiger mosquito expanded its geographic range throughout the northeastern United States, including Pennsylvania. The establishment of Aedes albopictus in novel areas raises significant public health concerns, since this species is a highly competent vector of several arboviruses, including chikungunya, West Nile, and den...

Satellite-based near-surface (0-2cm) soil moisture estimates have global coverage, but do not capture variations of soil moisture in the root zone (up to 100 cm depth) and may be biased with respect to ground-based soil moisture measurements. Here, we present an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) hydrologic data assimilation system that predicts bias in...

Vegetation response to nutrient addition can vary across space, yet studies that explicitly incorporate spatial pattern into experimental approaches are rare. To explore whether there are unique spatial scales (grains) at which grass response to nutrients and herbivory is best expressed, we imposed a large (∼3.75 ha) experiment in a South African c...

Raw data used to calculate semivariograms of plant biomass, plant nutrient concentration, and soil nutrient concentration Data includes plot identification (MA, MB, MC, MD, ME, MF), subplot number (1–127), x and y coordinates (meters), subplot size (1 × 1 m, 2 × 2 m, 4 × 4 m), UTM coordinates for x and y plot coordinate, Disc Pasture Meter (DPM rea...

Empirical and simulated spatial model parameters of biomass Spatial model parameters [range (3* φ), sill (σ2), nugget (τ2), and noise to signal ratio (τ2∕(τ2 + σ2)] of empirical and simulated biomass across treatments. Sill and nugget values are scaled (0–1) to facilitate comparisons across treatments.

Empirical spatial model parameters of vegetation and soil nutrients Parameters of the empirical spatial model of vegetation phosphorus and nitrogen (%), soil phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N), and soil (C) using maximum likelihood analysis across experimental plots in Mkambathi Nature Reserve, one year following nutrient fertilization. nd=not defined...

Soil N, P, C, pH. Soil nutrients and pH Soil nitrogen (%) and phosphorus content (mg kg−1), and soil pH (mean ± 1 standard error (SE)) across fenced treatments only, and in Mkambathi Nature Reserve, one year following nutrient additions.

Disc Pasture Meter calibration Results of the linear regression to calibrate disc pasture meter (DPM) readings to vegetation biomass (n = 60).

Disturbances influence vegetation patterns at multiple scales, but studies that isolate the effect of scale are rare, meaning that scale and process are often confounded. To explore this, we imposed a large (~3.75 ha) experiment in a South African coastal grassland ecosystem to determine the spatial scale of grass response to nutrient additions. In...

Disturbances influence vegetation patterns at multiple scales, but studies that isolate the effect of scale are rare, meaning that scale and process are often confounded. To explore this, we imposed a large (~3.75 ha) experiment in a South African coastal grassland ecosystem to determine the spatial scale of grass response to nutrient additions. In...

Land cover and its change have been linked to Buruli ulcer (BU), a rapidly emerging tropical disease. However, it is unknown whether landscape structure affects the disease prevalence. To examine the association between landscape pattern and BU presence, we obtained land cover information for 20 villages in southwestern Ghana from high resolution s...

Native generalist herbivores might limit plant invasion by consuming invading plants or enhance plant invasion by selectively avoiding them. The role of herbivores in plant invasion has been investigated in relation to plant native/introduced status, however, a knowledge gap exists about whether food selection occurs according to native/introduced...

Successfully addressing neglected tropical diseases requires nuanced understandings of pathogenic landscapes that incorporate situated, contexualized community knowledge. In the case of Buruli ulcer (BU), the role of social science is vital to investigate complex human-environment interactions and navigate different ways of knowing. We analyze a se...

Introduction Despite exponential growth in the number and extent of protected areas globally, their role within disease dynamics remains unclear. Protected areas shape many biophysical and social factors related to malaria prevalence such as land use-land cover, biodiversity, socioeconomic conditions, and human behavior. This work examines the exte...

The prospect of rapidly changing climates over the next century calls for methods to predict their effects on myriad, interactive ecosystem processes. Spatially explicit models that simulate ecosystem dynamics at fine (plant, stand) to coarse (regional, global) scales are indispensable tools for meeting this challenge under a variety of possible fu...

Global climate varies naturally at millennial time scales, but humans, primarily through combustion of fossil fuels, have now added sufficient greenhouse gases to the atmosphere to cause rapid climate warming at a rate unprecedented in the last 10,000 years (IPCC 2007). In light of its potential adverse effects on natural, political, social, and ec...

Buruli ulcer (BU), one of 17 neglected tropical diseases, is a debilitating skin and soft tissue infection caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans. In tropical Africa, changes in land use and proximity to water have been associated with the disease. This study presents the first analysis of BU at the village level in southwestern Ghana, where prevalence r...

Study region: Buruli ulcer, an emerging disease caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans, largely affects poor rural populations in tropical countries. The environmental niche that supports this necrotizing bacterium is unclear. Here, water samples were collected from five communities within Ghana in the rainy season in 2011: four in the southern part of G...

Large uncertainties surrounding root-specific parameters limit model descriptions of belowground processes and ultimately hinder understanding of belowground carbon (C) dynamics and terrestrial biogeochemistry. Despite this recognized shortcoming, it is unclear which processes warrant attention in model development, given the computational cost of...

Root biomass, root production and lifespan, and root-mycorrhizal interactions govern soil carbon fluxes and resource uptake and are critical components of terrestrial models. However, limitations in data and confusions over terminology, together with a strong dependence on a small set of conceptual frameworks, have limited the exploration of root f...

Background/Question/Methods The contribution of landscape disturbance, relative to patterns in land cover types or climate, on terrestrial-atmosphere CO2 exchange is unknown. New approaches are needed that integrate disturbance patterns into diagnostic models to forecast their impact on landscape carbon fluxes and associated uncertainty. Here, we...

The timing of fine root production and turnover strongly influences both the seasonal potential for soil resource acquisition among competing root systems and the plant fluxes of root carbon into soil pools. However, basic patterns and variability in the rates and timing or fine root production and turnover are generally unknown among perennial pla...

Ongoing changes in disturbance regimes are predicted to cause acute changes in ecosystem structure and function in the coming decades, but many aspects of these predictions are uncertain. A key challenge is to improve the predictability of postdisturbance biogeochemical trajectories at the ecosystem level. Ecosystem ecologists and paleoecologists h...

Background/Question/Methods Urban runoff management has been practiced from antiquity, but its implementation in the last few centuries has emphasized subsurface engineering-based methods of runoff conveyance, often to the detriment of ecological systems. However, some recent planning approaches to urban runoff have moved to consider ecological s...

Background/Question/Methods Paleoecological approaches have contributed considerably to our understanding of species’ adaptation to changes in climate and disturbances at broad spatial and temporal scales. Contemporary approaches in conservation management, which are increasingly aimed at fostering ecosystem resilience under climate change, requi...

Fine root dynamics control a dominant flux of carbon from plants and into soils and mediate potential uptake and cycling of nutrients and water in terrestrial ecosystems. Understanding of these patterns is needed to accurately describe critical processes like productivity and carbon storage from ecosystem to global scales. However, limited observat...

Stress within tree roots may influence whole-tree responses to nutrient deficiencies or toxic ion accumulation, but the mechanisms that govern root responses to the belowground chemical environment are poorly quantified. Currently, root production is modeled using rates of forest production and stoichiometry, but this approach alone may be insuffic...

Stand-replacing fires influence soil nitrogen availability and microbial community composition, which may in turn mediate post-fire successional dynamics and nutrient cycling. However, fires create patchiness at both local and landscape scales and do not result in consistent patterns of ecological dynamics. The objectives of this study were to (1)...

Background/Question/Methods Education is one of the largest contributors to society having a functional and positive understanding of preservation, utilization, and sustaining varying ecosystems on multiple levels. Informal learning, global citizenship, and transformative learning are all tools that contribute greatly to the way in which students...

Background/Question/Methods Under the South Africa National Biodiversity Act, the Eastern Cape Park and Tourism Board (ECPTA) is required to implement management plans to control invasive species within its nature reserves. The Dwesa-Cwebe nature Reserve, the location of this study site, is recognized by Conservation International for having the...

Background/Question/Methods Fine root lifespan and turnover control a dominant flux of carbon from plants into soils and affect the nutrient and water uptake of a root system. Today, terrestrial models incorporate fine root turnover which, depending on model structure, may impact rates of carbon accrual in soil as well as limit net primary produc...

Background/Question/Methods Integration of disturbance patterns into carbon (C) flux estimates to improve terrestrial-atmosphere C exchange is a critical priority for the North American Carbon Program. This project is built upon previous finding from The Chequamegon Ecosystem Atmospheric Study and aims to quantify uncertainty in C flux upscaling d...

We echo viewpoints presented in recent publications from EcoHealth and other journals arguing for the need to understand linkages between human health, disease ecology, and landscape change. We underscore the importance of incorporating spatialities of human behaviors and perceptions in such analyses to further understandings of socio-ecological in...

Although linkages of leaf and whole-plant traits to leaf lifespan have been rigorously investigated, there is a limited understanding of similar linkages of whole-plant and fine root traits to root lifespan. In comparisons across species, do suites of traits found in leaves also exist for roots, and can these traits be used to predict root lifespan...

The response of biogeochemical fluxes to perturbation has been a major focus of ecosystem studies for decades (Bormann and Likens 1979a; Vitousek and Melillo 1979; West et al. 1981). Perturbation is a fundamental component of conceptualizations of system resilience (Holling 1973; Carpenter et al. 2001; Folke et al. 2004), complex adaptive cycles (N...

The amount of carbon stored in African terrestrial ecosystems is unknown, varying from 30 to >250 Mg C ha-1 in tropical forests. Several prominent efforts are improving this estimate through forest inventories and modeling, but carbon storage varies across ecosystems and some ecosystems remain vastly understudied. This is critical given that Africa...

Buruli ulcer, an emerging bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium ulcerans, affects populations in many equatorial countries, predominantly in western Africa. Occurring in over thirty countries worldwide, it is the third most common Mycobacterial disease after tuberculosis and leprosy. The disease causes ulcerative lesions and can lead to severe...

Complex interactions between disturbance, climate, and vegetation will dramatically alter spatial patterns and ecosystem processes in the future, but the interactions between multiple disturbances may ultimately determine vegetation response and landscape dynamics. The frequency and extent of wildland fire, mountain pine beetles, and blister rust a...

Following fire, fine-scale variation in early successional vegetation and soil nutrients may influence development of ecosystem structure and function. We studied conifer forests burned by stand-replacing wildfire in Greater Yellowstone (Wyoming, USA) to address two questions: (1) How do the variability and spatial structure of aboveground cover an...

Human activities have increased deleterious nitrogen inputs to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems. The lessening of nitrogen inputs to streams can be achieved through the protection and restoration of riparian zones, including headwater wetlands. However, although headwater streams and their associated habitats account for the majority of the drain...

Climate change is likely to alter wildfire regimes, but the magnitude and timing of potential climate-driven changes in regional fire regimes are not well understood. We considered how the occurrence, size, and spatial location of large fires might respond to climate projections in the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem (GYE) (Wyoming), a large wildland...

More frequent fires under climate warming are likely to alter terrestrial carbon (C) stocks by reducing the amount of C stored in biomass and soil. However, the thresholds of fire frequency that could shift landscapes from C sinks to C sources under future climates and whether these are likely to be exceeded during the coming century are not known....

Understanding how stand-replacing fires control release of carbon from forests is critical for predicting changes in carbon storage across large areas, particularly if climate change alters disturbance frequency. We used three approaches to assess how fire changes carbon storage for a landscape. First, we measured carbon storage and carbon accumula...

Although small in size, headwater wetland complexes provide a disproportionate share of microbially mediated ecosystem services to the surrounding landscape and hydroscape. Two services that are of current interest to scientists and managers, given their role in regulating climate and water quality, are the retention and transformation of carbon an...

The subalpine forests of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are vulnerable to extreme fires under climate change but the consequences of repeated large fire events on vegetation dynamics and carbon (C) storage are unknown. Shifts in post-fire succession may represent fundamental changes in the potential of western forests to sequester atmospheric C....

Future fire events of the northeastern United States are likely to vary in frequency, severity, and spatial distribution. Causes for these shifts can be understood in terms of changes in the geography, climate, fuels, and ignition sources that will govern the distribution of fire on future northeastern landscapes, all of which are projected to be d...

Background/Question/Methods Elevated nitrogen deposition alters soil biogeochemistry and associated ecosystem processes that can lead to plant mortality and decline in stand productivity. Understanding the effects of elevated nitrogen deposition as a result of different land use practices is critical for predictive understanding of ecosystem prod...

Background/Question/Methods Introductory collegiate courses in the ecological and environmental sciences typically focus on giving students a base of fundamental knowledge, so that students are well prepared for further study and professional practice in these fields. These goals serve well those students heading into majors and careers in ecolog...

Western US Forest managers face more wildfires than ever before, and it is increasingly imperative to anticipate the consequences of this trend. Large fires in the northern Rocky Mountains have increased in association with warmer temperatures, earlier snowmelt, and longer fire seasons (1), and this trend is likely to continue with global warming (...

Background/Question/Methods Complex ecosystem dynamics emerge from the reciprocal interactions of disturbance, climate, and vegetation, and can have dramatic effects on ecosystem biogeochemistry. Ecosystem models can be used to forecast altered ecosystem biogeochemistry and function in complex systems, but it remains a challenge to unravel emergen...

Background/Question/Methods N deposition induces a complex series of alterations to soil and plant chemistry that affect productivity, competition, and microbial community structure in forest ecosystems. Fine roots are the direct interface between plant and soil nutrient pools; root production and turnover affects the amount of N uptake and C relea...

Long-term, landscape patterns in inorganic nitrogen (N) availability and N stocks following infrequent, stand-replacing fire are unknown but are important for interpreting the effect of disturbances on ecosystem function. Here, we present results from a replicated chronosequence study in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (Wyoming, USA) directed at...

Understanding nutrient dynamics of young postfire forests may yield important insights about how stands develop following stand-replacing wildfires. We studied 15-year-old lodgepole pine stands that regenerated naturally following the 1988 Yellowstone fires to address two questions: (1) How do foliar nitrogen (N) concentration and total foliar N va...

The interaction between disturbance and climate change and resultant effects on ecosystem carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) fluxes are poorly understood. Here, we model (using CENTURY version 4.5) how climate change may affect C and N fluxes among mature and regenerating lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia Engelm. ex S. Wats.) stands that vary...

We characterised the remarkable heterogeneity following the large, severe fires of 1988 in Yellowstone National Park (YNP), in the northern Rocky Mountains, Wyoming, USA, by focussing on spatial variation in post-fire structure, composition and ecosystem function at broad, meso, and fine scales. Ecological heterogeneity at multiple scales may enhan...

Fire is the dominant disturbance in the interior boreal region of Alaska and is predicted to increase with climate warming. This variation in the boreal fire regime could play a critical role in climate feedbacks by altering forest productivity and succession and, consequently, biogeochemical cycling, carbon sequestration, and surface energy fluxes...

Nitrogen (N) limits productivity in many coniferous forests of the western US, but the influence of post-fire structure on N cycling rates in early successional stands is not well understood. We asked if the heterogeneity created by downed wood and regenerating pine saplings affected N mineralization and microbial community composition in 15-yr old...

Understanding ecosystem processes as they relate to wildfire and vegetation dynamics is of growing importance as fire frequency and extent increase throughout the western United States. However, the effects of severe, stand-replacing wildfires are poorly understood. We studied inorganic nitrogen pools and mineralization rates after stand-replacing...

Short- and long-term patterns of net ecosystem carbon balance (NECB) for small, relatively uniform forest stands have been examined in detail, but the same is not true for landscapes, especially those with heterogeneous disturbance histories. In this paper, we explore the effect of two contrasting types of disturbances (i.e., fire and tree harvest)...

Without Abstract

How much organic C can a region naturally store in its ecosystems? How can this be determined, when land management has altered the vegetation of the landscape substantially? The answers may lie in the soil: this study synthesized the spatial distribution of soil properties derived from the state soils geographic database with empirical measurement...