Wayne C. Zipperer

US Forest Service | FS · Program for Understanding Changing Social and Natural Systems

The consistent sporadic transmission of West Nile Virus (WNV) in the city of New Orleans justifies the need for distribution risk maps highlighting human risk of mosquito bites. We modeled the influence of biophysical and socioeconomic metrics on the spatio-temporal distributions of presence/vector-host contact (VHC) ratios of WNV vector, Culex qui...

The integrated effects of the many risk factors associated with West Nile virus (WNV) incidence are complex and not well understood. We studied an array of risk factors in and around Atlanta, GA, that have been shown to be linked with WNV in other locations. This array was comprehensive and included climate and meteorological metrics, vegetation ch...

The majority of humanity now lives in cities or towns, with this proportion expected to continue increasing for the foreseeable future. As novel ecosystems, urban areas offer an ideal opportunity to examine multi-scalar processes involved in community assembly as well as the role of human activities in modulating environmental drivers of biodiversi...

As urbanization can involve multiple alterations to the soil environment, it is uncertain how urbanization effects soil nitrogen cycling. We established 22-0.04 ha plots in six different land cover types—rural slash pine (Pinus elliottii) plantations (n = 3), rural natural pine forests (n = 3), rural natural oak forests (n = 4), urban pine forests...

Urbanization can alter nutrient cycling. This research evaluated how urbanization affected nutrient dynamics in the subtropics. We established 17-0.04 ha plots in five different land cover types—slash pine (Pinus elliottii) plantations (n = 3), rural natural pine forests (n = 3), rural natural oak forests (n = 4), urban pine forests (n = 3) and urb...

Using findings of the Cities and Biodiversity Outlook (CBO), we propose three specific solutions to mitigate the loss of ecosystem services and biodiversity in our urban and urbanizing landscapes. The CBO identified continued loss of criti-cal habitats for biodiversity conservation and degradation of many important ecosystem services due to urbaniz...

Anthropogenic changes in land use and cover (LULC) in stream catchments can alter the composition of riparian plant communities, which can affect ecosystem functions of riparian areas and streams from local to landscape scales. We conducted a study to determine if woody plant species composition and abundance along headwater streams were correlated...

A city's trees reduce its energy use year round. In warm months trees shade buildings and provide evaporative cooling, and in cold months they block icy winter winds. Trees near a building tend to reduce air conditioning use in that building in the summer months. The same trees can either increase or decrease energy use in a building during the win...

Ecosystem benefits from trees are linked directly to the amount of healthy urban forest canopy cover. Urban forest cover is dynamic and changes over time due to factors such as urban development, windstorms, tree removals, and growth. The amount of a city's canopy cover depends on its land use, climate, and people's preferences. This fact sheet exa...

We present information on the urban forests and land uses within the watershed of Puerto Rico’s 21 658-ha San Juan Bay Estuary based on urban forest inventories undertaken in 2001 and 2011. We found 2548 ha of mangrove and subtropical moist secondary forests covering 11.8 percent of the total watershed area in 2011. Red, black, and white mangroves...

Urbanization destroys or modifies native habitats and creates new ones with its infrastructure. Because of these changes, urban landscapes favor non-native and native species that are generalists. Nevertheless, cities reveal a great variety of habitats and species, and, especially in temperate cities, the diversity of vascular plants and birds can...

Background/Question/Methods West Nile virus (WNV), the most widespread arboviral pathogen in the US, is associated with urban environments in the South-Eastern US. Potential drivers of this association (land-use land-cover, socio-economic characteristics, and larval habitat availability and quality) vary across the rural-urban gradient, as well a...

Coastal areas are rapidly developing due to population growth and the appeal of coastlines. In order to gain insight into how land use/cover affects carbon (C) storage in a coastal context, we examined soil and vegetation C and soil nitrogen (N) across land uses near Apalachicola, FL. Forested wetlands had the greatest soil C and N storage, while n...

Mechanical fuels treatments are being widely used in fire prone ecosystems where fuel loading poses a hazard, yet little research examining fuel dynamics, fire behavior, and ecological effects exists, especially in the southeastern US. In order to broaden our understanding of these treatments, effects of mechanical mastication ("mowing") were exami...

Mechanical fuels treatments are being used in fire-prone ecosystems where fuel loading poses a hazard, yet little research elucidating subsequent fire behaviour exists, especially in litter-dominated fuelbeds. To address this deficiency, we burned constructed fuelbeds from masticated sites in pine flatwoods forests in northern Florida with palmetto...

Urbanization destroys or modifies native habitats and creates new ones with its infrastructure. Because of these changes, urban landscapes favor non-native and native species that are generalists. Nevertheless, cities reveal a great variety of habitats and species, and, especially in temperate cities, the diversity of vascular plants and birds can...

Landscape change is an ongoing process even within established urban landscapes. Yet, analyses of fragmentation and deforestation have focused primarily on the conversion of non-urban to urban landscapes in rural landscapes and ignored urban landscapes. To determine the ecological effects of continued urbanization in urban landscapes, tree-covered...

Background/Question/Methods Understanding variables that are associated with higher or lower aboveground carbon in forest ecosystems will aid in managing our forest resources for reducing carbon emissions through sequestration in plant biomass. We tested the effect of land use (as a proxy of anthropogenic influence on forest ecosystems), tree den...

Background/Question/Methods Urban watersheds are heterogeneous, often including complex forest structure and dynamics. Our understanding of the importance of legacy in hydric forest systems is lacking for subtropical urban watersheds. This study focused on hydric sites in the Hillsborough River watershed within the greater Tampa Bay Watershed, Fl...

Background/Question/Methods The Gulf Coast of Florida has been considered a “hotspot” of population growth and very few studies exist that focus on the impact of land use change on biogeochemical cycling along coastlines. Previous research in the Florida Panhandle has indicated that shifts in land use from pine flatwoods and maritime forests to ur...

Background/Question/Methods Traumatic anthropogenic or natural disasters can redefine the ecological and social diversity of cities, with "new normal" conditions often emerging in post-trauma urban landscapes. The objective of our ULTRA project is to examine how the pace and trajectory of recovery in post-Katrina New Orleans reflect ecological an...

The social and ecological processes impacting on urban forests have been studied at multiple temporal and spatial scales in order to help us quantify, monitor, and value the ecosystem services that benefit people. Few studies have comprehensively analyzed the full suite of ecosystem services, goods (ESG), and ecosystem disservices provided by an ur...

The responses of urban park woodlands to large disturbances provide the opportunity to identify and examine linkages in social-ecological systems in urban landscapes. We propose that the Panarchy model consisting of hierarchically nested adaptive cycles provides a useful framework to evaluate those linkages. We use two case studies as examples – Ch...

This is smaller version of the SECAS model originally developed for my dissertation and full presented in: Morse, W. C., McLaughlin, B., Wulfhorst, J. D., and C. Harvey (2013). Social ecological complex adaptive systems: A framework for research on payments for ecosystem services. Urban Ecosystems, 16, 53-77.

Urban green space is purported to offset greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions, remove air and water pollutants, cool local climate, and improve public health. To use these services, municipalities have focused efforts on designing and implementing ecosystem-services-based "green infrastructure" in urban environments. In some cases the environmental benef...

Urban forest management and policies have been promoted as a tool to mitigate carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. This study used existing CO2 reduction measures from subtropical Miami-Dade and Gainesville, USA and modeled carbon storage and sequestration by trees to analyze policies that use urban forests to offset carbon emissions. Field data were an...

IntroductionMethodologyResultsDiscussionConclusion References

Knowledge of how species differ in their flammability characteristics is needed to develop more reliable lists of plants recommended for landscaping homes in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). As indicated by conflicting advice in such lists, such characterisation is not without difficulties and disagreements. The flammability of vegetation is oft...

FOR-214, a 3-page illustrated fact sheet by Francisco Escobedo, Jennifer A. Seitz, and Wayne Zipperer, provides an overview of the composition and structure of the urban forest found in Gainesville, Florida. Includes references. Published by the UF School of Forest Resources and Conservation, April 2009. FOR 214/FR276: Gainesville's Urban Forest St...

Poor air quality is a common problem in many urban areas. It can lead to human health problems and reduced visibility, and it can impair the health of plants and wildlife. The urban forest can help improve air quality by removing pollutants and by reducing air temperature through shading and transpiration. Trees also emit volatile organic compounds...

Introduction: The urban landscape is highly altered by human activities and is a mosaic of different land covers and land uses. Imbedded in this are forest patches of different origins (Zipperer et al., 1997). How these patches influence and are influenced by the urban landscape is of ecological importance when managing the urban forest for ecosyst...

Exotic Wisteria species are highly favoured for their horticultural qualities and have been cultivated in North America since the early 1800s. This study determines the identity, genetic diversity and hybrid status of 25 Asian Wisteria cultivars using plastid, mitochondrial and nuclear DNA data. Fifteen (60%) hybrid cultivars were identified. All o...

We recognize that most of the recommendations and issues described in this chapter and book have not benefited from the experiences of people in cities on all continents, but mainly reflect current urban forestry concerns in selected countries in Europe, Asia, and North America, where conference participants live and work. In addition, the urban fo...

An ecosystem is defined as a spatially and temporally explicit place that includes all the organisms, all abiotic factors in that environment, and their interactions (Likens, 1992). For an urban ecosystem, this includes the entire set of social, ecological, and physical components that define an urban area. One might ask, What is an urban ecosystem...

In order to understand the effect of urban development on the functioning of forest ecosystems during the past decade we have been studying red oak stands located on similar soil along an urban-rural gradient running from New York City ro rural Litchfield County, Connecticut. This paper summarizes the results of this work. Field measurements, contr...

Ecological studies of terrestrial urban systems have been approached along several kinds of contrasts: ecology in as opposed to ecology of cities; biogeochemical compared to organismal perspectives, land use planning versus biological, and disciplinary versus interdisciplinary. In order to point out how urban ecological studies are poised for signi...

Exotic Wisteria are increasingly serious invasive plants of watersheds and managed forests throughout the south-eastern United States. Naturalised individuals are frequently identified as either Wisteria floribunda or W. sinensis, but may differ significantly from the original descriptions of either of those species. Here, we use data from the nucl...

People’s connection to land is an important contributor to identity in traditional southern society. In small southern communities, to know where someone lives is to know who someone is because place assigns biography. Studies have investigated the physical and economic implications of landscape change in the South, but comparatively little researc...

The increasing numbers and negative impacts of invasive species have prompted research on the relationship between human activities and the success of invasive horticultural plants. In this study, we use population genetic relationships to model the escape of a common garden vine, exotic Wisteria, into natural habitats. Urban and naturalized Wister...

As budgets for Cooperative Extension projects get tighter, many units are enticed to consider partnerships with agencies and organizations to continue to proactively deliver services. Our experience working with the USDA Forest Service in a partnership that involves joint staffing and funding for technology transfer and research projects enables us...

Forests embedded in an urban matrix are a useful venue for investigating the effects of multiple factors such as climate change, altered disturbance regimes and species invasions on forest ecosystems. Urban forests also represent a significant land area, with potentially important effects on landscape and regional scale nitrogen (N) and carbon (C)...

Six understory species from five pine flatwood sites and six understory species from five hardwood hammock sites were harvested for biomass analyses to compare potential flammability between two ecosystems in the south-eastern coastal plain of the United States. Plant components were separated into live and dead foliage, accumulated litter on and u...

Ecological studies of terrestrial urban systems have been approached along several kinds of contrasts: ecology in as opposed to ecology of cities; biogeochemical compared to organismal perspectives, land use planning versus biological, and disciplinary versus interdisciplinary. In order to point out how urban ecological studies are poised for signi...

Riparian areas are hotspots of interactions between plants, soil, water, microbes, and people. While urban land use change has been shown to have dramatic effects on watershed hydrology, there has been surpris- ingly little analysis of its effects on riparian areas. Here we examine the ecology of urban riparian zones, focusing on work done in the B...

Riparian zones have been found to function as "sinks" for nitrate (NO3-), the most common groundwater pollutant in the U. S., in many areas. The vast majority of riparian research, however, has focused on agricultural watersheds. There has been little analysis of riparian zones in urban watersheds, despite the fact that urban areas are important so...

Regenerated and remnant forest patches were inventoried in Syracuse, New York, USA to determine differences in structure, species composition, human disturbances, and landscape context. Patches had similar mean stem diameter, total stem density, and total basal areas, but differed with respect to diameter distribution, disturbance regime, landscape...

Currently, over 50% of the world's population lives in urban areas. By 2050, this estimate is expected to be 70%. This urban growth, however, is not uniformly distributed around the world. The majority of it will occur in developing nations and create megacities whose populations exceed at least 10 million people. Not all urban areas, however, are...

Concern about environmental quality and the long-term livability of urban areas is now a driving paradigm for planning professionals. Although a modern ecological framework exists, inappropriate or outdated concepts continue to be used in the context of land-use decision making. These classical concepts emphasize a static view of the landscape and...

Understanding contemporary urban landscapes requires multiple sets of spatially and temporally compatible data that can integrate historical land use patterns and disturbances to land cover. This paper presents three principal methods: (1) core analysis; (2) historic mapping; and (3) gradient analysis, to link spatial and temporal data for urban ec...

Analysis of urban tree cover is generally limited to inventories of tree structure and composition on public lands. This approach provided valuable information for resource management. However, it does not account for all tree cover within an urban landscape, thus providing insufficient information on ecological patterns and processes. We propose e...

In order to understand the effect of urban development on the functioning of forest ecosystems, during the past decade we have been studying red oak stands located on similar soil along an urban-rural gradient running from New York City ro rural Litchfield County, Connecticut. This paper summarizes the results of this work. Field measurements, cont...

The rapid urbanization of rural landscapes for primary and secondary homes can significantly affect bird populations as wildlands are developed. To study this effect, we conducted bird counts within the Lake of the Ozarks region of central Missouri in three different landscape types: wildlands, dispersed single homes, and cluster development. For e...

In March 1991, a major ice storm occurred in Rochester, New York. Data from a comprehensive public tree survey, designed to include information on storm damage, were used to identify responses of urban trees to severe glaze accumulation. Storm-damaged trees were classified as follows: Removal 1 (R1s), those that sustained 75% or greater live crown...

We used aerial photographs from 1926, 1964, and 1988 to map wetlands within a 36 km2 area adjacent to Syracuse, NY. During this 63 year period, land use shifted from an intensively managed agricultural landscape to an urban landscape. We documented temporal changes in the number, total area, mean area, and vegetation cover types of wetlands. The nu...

Five identifiable patterns of deforestation are recognized - internal, indentation, cropping, fragmentation, and removal - and each has a distinct effect on habitat quality of forest patches in the eastern United States. By overlaying land use maps from 1973 and 1981 for three counties in the State of Maryland (Prince Georges, Anne Arundel, and Wic...

Thornden Park, located in Syracuse, NY, USA, was transformed from a nineteenth century English estate to a public park in 1921. Accompanying this transformation, there has been a corresponding change in vegetation. Prevalent trees were elms, maples, oaks, willows, spruces, and orchard species. Dominant cover types were lawn (65.4%) and parkland (22...

The more than I million acre New York-New Jersey Highlands Region is a unique forested and rural landscape at the urban/ wildland interface with the New York-New Jersey Metropolitan area where over 18 million people reside. Conversion of land to residential and urban uses, parcellation of lands, fragmentation of forest cover, and increasing demand...

The composition and structure of streetside trees in residential areas were surveyed for three counties within the State of Maryland, U.S.A.: Wicomico, Prince Georges, and Anne Arundel. In the rapidly developing county of Princes Georges, streetside trees were dominated by non-native species. Anne Arundel County, with its moderate urban growth, had...

In landscapes of the eastern U.S.A., deforestation and reforestation are continuing processes. To better understand these processes, we documented the change in density and size of forest islands within individual landscape types of central New York. Thirty-one-30-km2 sample landscapes were subdivided into 1-ha cells, and the cells were classified...

Onondaga County in central New York State was extensively cleared for agricultural use, so that by 1930 only 8% of the area maintained small and highly fragmented forest islands. Subsequent natural re-forestation in exurban parts of the county increased the forest cover to 40% of the total land area by 1980. New stands formed around many residual f...

Enzymatically isolated hepatocytes were utilized to evaluate levels of lipid peroxidation in young (3 months), adult (12 months) and aged (25 months) Fisher-344 female rats. Lipid peroxidation was measured by assaying levels of malonaldehyde, a by-product of the peroxidation reaction. Young, adult and aged animals were fed a liquid antioxidant-free...