Articles

LANDFIRE is a nationwide mapping program that began 22 years ago and provides a vast suite of geospatial datasets related to vegetation and disturbance across the United States. These products often serve as the silent foundation to national wildland fire and natural resource planning applications. It is difficult to portray the amount and variety of data LANDFIRE ingests to inform its products...

Understory plantings of subtrees and shrubs are often successful from a survival standpoint, but rarely decrease invasive grass biomass or lead to newly recruiting native species in Hawaii.

New research addresses the first priority of the Native Seed Partnership plan, which was co-developed with agency and non-profit partners, native seed businesses, and researchers, to improve the success of native seed restoration.

An expansivestudy reveals the diversity of pollinator communities throughout the entire Southeast.The study is the first of its kind and was conducted across 19 experimental forests of the Southern Research Station. Most of these research sites are located on national forest lands and were established decades ago.“These experimental forests provide a good representation of major forest types ...

Introduced animals are among the most persistent threats to Hawaiʻi’s forests. Ungulates such as feral pigs, goats, sheep, cattle, and deer can damage native vegetation, reducing forest regeneration through overgrazing, soil disturbance, increased erosion, and by spreading invasive plants and diseases. Rapid ʻŌhiʻa Death, commonly known as ROD, is one such disease that can be spread by fe...

A long-term at the Penobscot Experimental Forest in Maine, which started in 1964, compares no harvesting and clearcutting with whole-tree harvesting, stem-only harvesting (in which branches and residues are left on site), and stem-only harvesting with prescribed burning over time in a spruce-fir forest. The 50-year results of this experiment, and data from repeated treatments implemented in 2018, demonstrate that whole-tree harvesting had a smaller impact on forest productivity, both in terms of stand structure and nutrient availability, than expected.

The interagency Oregon Postfire Research and Monitoring Collaborative recently convened its science and leadership teams in Corvallis, Oregon. The group serves as a valuable resource across Oregon for shared stewardship of wildfire-affected landscapes, through expanded connections, shared learning, robust knowledge, and increased awareness of research and monitoring information and tools.

The Forest Service manages many of the most popular recreation sites in southern California and is working to preserve and enhance public benefit by integrating the best available scientific understanding of various risks to recreation and recreation sites into management. Researchers from the Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest and Pacific Southwest Research Stations and Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Center worked with the Forest Service’s Pacific Southwest Region to assess potential risks to visitors’ outdoor experiences and determine actions to address those risks.

In early July, the Fishlake National Forest teamed up with the Bureau of Land Management and Utah Division of Wildlife Resources to do a fish rescue in a stream in the potential path of the Cottonwood Wildfire. The Bonneville cutthroat trout is a Forest Sensitive Species on the Fishlake National Forest. When areas burn in a wildfire, fish populations are at risk from ash flow, sedimentation, and flooding. While fire is a natural process and fish are adapted to it, their habitats aren’t connected like they used to be due to water diversions and the introduction of non-native fish species; thus recovery after a fire is harder. That’s where aquatics biologists step in! The fish collected will be taken to a fish hatchery to preserve the genetics of this special population and assure they will be available to repopulate local streams in the native range of Bonneville cutthroat trout after they recover from the wildfire.

A new dataset allows managers to rapidly assess current watershed conditions and evaluate road effects within the watersheds that will be affected by proposed fuel treatment areas.

The first application of a robust method to calculate water yield change post-fire from satellite data is available that is much less expensive than traditional stream gauge based approaches.

A new study is the first North American assessment to measure the impact of tethered logging on hillslope erosion.

Researchers have built a computer model to predict how rivers change their shape after restoration interventions that are being used extensively in Front Range rivers.

For decades, national participation in hunting has been on the decline. One population of hunters, however, is bucking the trend: Women.

A new study highlights the importance of seed conservation programs like Seeds of Success and ongoing seed collection efforts in preserving adaptive and resilient traits in native plants.

Forests provide the cleanest and most stable supply of water compared with other land-uses. A new USDA Forest Service report,Benefits of Southern Forests for Drinking Water, connects forests, water quality, and drinking water treatment costs, providing data to build partnerships between forest managers, private landowners, and water utilities. Most forest lands in the South are privately owned,...

This People, Places, and Priorities project provides a framework to help communities develop a shared plan for future forest health work across multiple ownerships. The framework brings locally relevant information into the planning process while building upon existing statewide and federal prioritization efforts.

The Resist-Accept-Direct (RAD) framework supports the management decision-making process within wilderness areas experiencing biodiversity loss. The framework provides the first comprehensive review of the limitations and challenges behind freshwater biodiversity conservation in U.S. protected areas.

Forest Service researchers have pioneered a unique and powerful method to characterize how similar the traits of six commercial varieties of bottlebrush squirreltail, a native bunchgrass species used in post-wildfire rehabilitation, are to wildland populations. The results can be used to predict where these commercial varieties can be used most effectively in the future.