Treesearch

Monitoring wildland fire burn severity is important for assessing ecological outcomes of fire and their spatial patterning as well as guiding efforts to mitigate or restore areas where ecological outcomes are negative. Burn severity mapping products are typically created using satellite reflectance data but must be calibrated to field data to derive meaning. The composite burn index (CBI) is the most widely used field-based method used to calibrate satellite-based burn severity data but important limitations of this approach have yet to be resolved. The objective of this study was focused...

Modeling flow in vegetative fuel beds is a key component in any detailed physics-based tool for simulating wildland fire dynamics. Current approaches for drag modeling, particularly those employed in multiphase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models, tend to take a relatively simple form and have been applied to a wide range of fuel structures. The suitability of these approaches has not been rigorously tested for conditions which may be encountered in a wildland fire context. Here, we focus on beds of Pinus rigida needle litter and undertake a two-part study to quantify the drag and...

The hazards associated with firebrands have been well documented. However, there exist few studies that allow for the hazard from a given fire to be quantified. To develop predictive tools to evaluate this hazard, it is necessary to understand the conditions that govern firebrand generation and those that affect firebrand deposition. A method is presented that allows for time-resolved measurements of fire behavior to be related to the dynamics of firebrand deposition. Firebrand dynamics were recorded in three fires undertaken in two different ecosystems. Fire intensity is shown to drive...

New physics-based fire behavior models are poised to revolutionize wildland fire planning and training; however, model testing against field conditions remains limited. We tested the ability of QUIC-Fire, a fast-running and computationally inexpensive physics-based fire behavior model to numerically reconstruct a large wildfire that burned in a fire-excluded area within the New York– Philadelphia metropolitan area in 2019. We then used QUIC-Fire as a tool to explore how alternate hypothetical management scenarios, such as prescribed burning, could have affected fire behavior. The results...

Cyclonic storms (often called hurricanes, typhoons, or cyclones) often cause population declines in vulnerable bird species, and the intensity of these storms appears to be increasing due to climate change. Prior studies have reported short-term impacts of hurricanes on avifauna, but few have examined long-term impacts. Over two decades (1993–2018), we periodically surveyed a subspecies of West Indian Woodpecker Melanerpes superciliaris nyeanus on San Salvador, a small island in The Bahamas, to determine its distribution on the island, habitat use, and effects of hurricanes on abundance...

Birds experience a sequence of critical events during their life cycle, and past events can subsequently determine future performance via carry-over effects. Events during the non-breeding season may influence breeding season phenology or productivity. Less is understood about how events during the breeding season affect individuals subsequently in their life cycle. Using stable carbon isotopes, we examined carry-over effects throughout the annual cycle of prairie warblers (Setophaga discolor), a declining Nearctic–Neotropical migratory passerine bird. In drier winters, juvenile males that...

This chapter is a review and synthesis of research conducted at Fernow Experimental Forest (FER) on stream nutrients and biological responses. It is intended to inform national and regional water quality regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, West Virginia Division of Forestry, and West Virginia Division of Natural Resources (WVDNR), about existing results of relevant scientific studies that are available at FER, and to identify future field and synthetic research of potential use to regulatory agencies that might be conducted at FER.

Here we provide guidance for the application of a land sparing production system designed to conserve forest-dependent wildlife in coffee growing regions where environmental conditions preclude coffee cultivation with a land-sharing strategy. In an Integrated Open Canopy ("IOC") coffee system, shade trees planted with coffee may be eliminated at the discretion of the farmer to control outbreaks of leaf rust and increase yields, while an adjacent forest patch of equal or greater area than coffee is conserved. Farmers are compensated for the opportunity costs of conserving forest by the sale...

Research involving nutrients and biogeochemistry has a long history at the Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory (CHL). The majority of nutrient research has focused on nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), and dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and less so on other nutrients such as calcium (Ca). This chapter reviews research at the CHL on watershed biogeochemistry and stream organismal and ecosystem responses to nutrient enrichment, with primary attention to N and P. It also identifies future research at CHL that could fill science gaps that are of high priority for regulators and suggests ways that...

Green infrastructure (GI) initiatives, including programs to plant trees and install bioswales, have been adopted by a growing number of local government and non-governmental organizations. While the details of these programs vary, a common characteristic of most Canadian and US GI initiatives is a distributed approach that includes both public and private land. To date, little research has explored residents’ knowledge of GI or their engagement with related initiatives even though residents' installation of GI is often key to creating distributed GI networks. In this study, we (1) assess...