Articles

Forest managers have continued challenges with exotic plant species following timber harvest. A new project looks at understory responses for seven years post-timber harvest across ten timber sales on the Black Hills National Forest.

Researchers are working to get ahead of smooth brome invasion and determine management options for both the public and private land managers.

Fire-managed forests of the past provide an alternative option for management.

Ongoing work with the belowground plant community is improving our insights into ecological theory to provide managers with a more comprehensive picture of nutrient acquisition and storage from a whole-plant perspective.

What can ranch managers expect in terms of forage quality after prescribed fire in the Great Plains? Initial findings from a new comprehensive study in the mixed grass prairie detail how adaptive management can help.

Producers are dealing with swings in forage availability for their livestock. A new resource called the South Dakota Drought Tool supports increased efficiency in herd production.

A new project reconstructs the historical vegetation of Kentucky - without frequent surface fires, fire-tolerant oaks have experienced a severe decline.

The NOAA Fire Weather Testbed facilitated integration of the Forest Service’s WindNinja model into the National Weather Service's spot weather forecasting system. This allows forecasters the new capability to run and visualize WindNinja in operational viewers for automated spot weather forecasts.

National Forests and Grasslands currently are estimated to store around 57 percent of their carbon potential. Planting riparian forests can more than double initial carbon accumulation rates versus natural regeneration, suggesting restoration of these areas can be highly impactful for land managers.

Western Forbs synthesizes knowledge gained from decades of research and practical experience with more than 50 native forb species.

Historical fire regimes are a useful but imperfect guide to future management for ecological integrity. Direct plant and animal data, where available, can reveal management targets that historical estimates alone would miss.

For six years, Forest Inventory and Analysis has supported the Oconaluftee Job Corps CCC by providing training in how to do forest inventories.

Fire managers rely on fuel moisture and wildfire danger models to assess conditions for prescribed burning and prioritize resources during busy wildfire seasons. These models have historically focused on the moisture content of surface fuels, like sticks and logs, but have ignored the role of soil moisture and its effects on living fuels, such as shrubs and trees. As it turns out, soil moisture is a critical driver of fire spread.

The Asian longhorned beetle arrived in the United States via solid wood packing materials and continues to pose a massive threat to North American forests. Ecologist R. Talbot Trotter III from the Forest Service’s Northern Research Station worked with colleagues from the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) to develop Asian Longhorned Beetle Eradication and Risk Tracking (ALBERT) 1.0 as a toolkit to support invasive insect eradication programs. Together, these tools within ALBERT 1.0 support managers by estimating infestation risk, tracking changes over time, and evaluating management strategies.

When Molokaʻi/Maui Invasive Species Committee (MoMISC) officials identified the presence of invasive coconut rhinoceros beetles (Oryctes rhinoceros) in traps near Kaunakakai, on the Hawaiian island of Molokaʻi, the discovery raised an important question: were the beetles isolated adults, or was the invasive pest already breeding somewhere out of sight?Coconut rhinoceros beetles are known dest...

Armillaria root disease is widespread across western North American forests, in part because it is hard to detect before significant damage has already occurred. Fortunately, thanks to advances in DNA sequencing, just a teaspoon of soil now opens up a giant window into the complex ecosystems of microbes, revealing potential management strategies.

SlashScan is a new mobile application for iPhone and iPad that field-going foresters, fuels managers, and contractors can use to simultaneously estimate slash pile volume and generate location data in real time without additional equipment.

The age-old question asks, “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make sound?” While philosophers and scientists alike have pondered this question for centuries, the more relevant question for today’s recreation and wildlife managers is, does it matter what makes the sound?For keystone predators in Alaska’s forests, their reality is an acoustic soundscape ...

To better understand changes in tree size-abundance relationships following disturbance, and to make it easier to estimate forest structure using remote sensing, Jonathan Knott, a Forest Service research forester, recently collaborated on research led by the University of Maine. The research team leveraged long-term forest monitoring networks in two studies, one to better understand the effects of disturbance on tree size-abundance relationships and one to develop a way to accurately estimate tree size distribution using readily available remotely sensed data. Together, these studies apply ecological theory to practical use, and their findings take steps towards more accurate predictions of forest structure across time and space.

Thanks to a powerful new online tool—the Spruce Budworm Atmospheric Transport Model (SBW-ATM)—managers can now forecast when, where, and how these moth swarms will emerge, travel, and land.