Fruit producers and exporters around the world are grappling with challenges related to post-harvest fruit decay, particularly in fruits such as apples and oranges destined for export, leading to waste and financial losses. The filamentous fungi, specifically Penicillium species, are the primary post-harvest pathogens affecting apples and oranges. This study evaluated the use of five non -Saccharomyces yeast species ( Suhomyce...

Forest composition is changing, yet the consequences for terrestrial carbon cycling are unclear. In the eastern United States, water‐demanding “mesophytic” tree species are replacing “xerophytic” oaks ( Quercus spp.) and hickories ( Carya spp.), raising concerns that forest productivity will become increasingly sensitive to more frequent and severe drought conditions predicted for the region. However, we have a limited underst...

Plants respond to their environment with both short‐term, within‐generation trait plasticity, and long‐term, between‐generation evolutionary changes. However, the relative magnitude of plant responses to short‐ and long‐term changes in the environment remains poorly understood. Shifts in phenological traits can serve as harbingers for responses to environmental change, and both a plant's current and source (i.e., genotype orig...

Vapour pressure deficit (VPD) is a critical measure of the atmospheric demand for water and can be used to assess short‐term and seasonal drought. To provide for probabilistic comparisons of VPD across space and time, we develop a Standardized Vapor Pressure Deficit Index (SVPDI). Similar to the way that other standardised drought indices are used, SVPDI allows for the analysis and comparison of changes in VPD across regions w...

Contextualizing current increases in Northern Hemisphere temperatures is precluded by the short instrumental record of the past ca. 120 years and the dearth of temperature-sensitive proxy records, particularly at lower latitudes south of <50 °N. We develop a network of 29 blue intensity chronologies derived from tree rings of Tsuga canadensis (L.) Carrière and Picea rubens Sarg. trees distributed across the Mid-Atlantic and No...

Forests around the world are experiencing changes due to climate variability and human land use. How these changes interact and influence the vulnerability of forests are not well understood. In the eastern United States, well‐documented anthropogenic disturbances and land‐use decisions, such as logging and fire suppression, have influenced forest species assemblages, leading to a demographic shift from forests dominated by xe...

Results of computational analyses require transparent disclosure of their supporting resources, while the analyses themselves often can be very large scale and involve multiple processing steps separated in time. Evidence for the correctness of any analysis should include not only a textual description, but also a formal record of the computations which produced the result, including accessible data and software with runtime p...

Tree rings provide an invaluable long‐term record for understanding how climate and other drivers shape tree growth and forest productivity. However, conventional tree‐ring analysis methods were not designed to simultaneously test effects of climate, tree size, and other drivers on individual growth. This has limited the potential to test ecologically relevant hypotheses on tree growth sensitivity to environmental drivers and...

Latewood ring widths of longleaf pine ( Pinus palustris Mill.) are effective recorders of annual variability of tropical cyclone (TC) precipitation (TCP), accounting for approximately half of the explained variance. Based on a regional chronology comprised of data from five sites in coastal North Carolina, we reconstructed TCP during 1750–2015 to examine temporal variability of multidecadal dry and wet TCP regimes, the synopti...

Summer temperatures across eastern North America (hereafter East) will soon reach a level consistently above any observation experienced during the instrumental period. Increasing temperatures will have negative impacts on natural (e.g., water, plant and animal communities) and human (e.g., health, infrastructure, economies) systems upon which the large and growing centres of human population across the region depend. Within t...