Treesearch

National forest law enforcement officers regularly encounter “nonrecreational” campers whose tenure exceeds established stay limits (generally 2 weeks). Some long-term occupants are homeless and seek use of the forest as a temporary or long-term residence. Long-term nonrecreational campers present myriad concerns for forest officials, who seek to balance public access and resource conservation. In addition to biophysical impacts because of waste, disposal of chemicals, soil compaction, and damage to vegetation, nonrecreational campers can alter the social environment being shared with...

We tested the effects of phosphorus (P) fertilization and soil water on the growth, physiology, and total nitrogen (N) accumulation in N-fixing Scotch broom in Olympia, WA. We manipulated soil water and P availability via irrigation and fertilization, respectively, in a completely randomized 2 x 2 factorial on potted one-year old Scotch broom seedlings (n = 20) in an N-deficient sand. There was substantial evidence that increased-irrigation and P-fertilization had similar positive effects on N accumulation in Scotch broom approximately equally. High-irrigation rates were more often...

The practice of removing fire-killed trees from burned forests (or “postfire salvage logging”) has sparked public controversy and scientific debate when conducted on public lands in the United States. This review synthesizes the current scientific literature on the subject, providing an update to a 2000 literature review (PNW-GTR-486) and subsequent synthesis (PNW-GTR-776). Forty-three published studies are reviewed, summarizing ecological effects on wildlife, vegetation, fuels, soils, and other environmental variables. Several key themes emerge from the review and specific research topics...

Old forests are often patchily distributed in contemporary forested landscapes leading to conservation concerns for species dependent on these forest types. In the absence of broad-scale recovery of old forests, conservation initiatives have emphasized connecting forested landscapes to facilitate movement of genes or individuals. We assessed forest connectivity for a low-vagile arboreal rodent (red tree vole; Arborimus longicaudus), an obligate of old forests within a distinct population segment that is a candidate for listing under the US Endangered Species Act in the northern Oregon...

Exposure of nontarget wildlife to anticoagulant rodenticides (AR) is a global conservation concern typically centered around urban or agricultural areas. Recently, however, the illegal use of ARs in remote forests of California, USA, has exposed sensitive predators, including the federally threatened northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina). We used congeneric barred owls (S. varia) as a sentinel species to investigate whether ARs pose a threat to spotted owls and other old-forest wildlife in northern regions of the Pacific Northwest. We analyzed the liver tissue from 40 barred...

In dealing with predicted changes in environmental conditions outside those experienced today, forest managers and researchers rely on process‐based models to inform physiological processes and predict future forest growth responses. The carbon and oxygen isotope ratios of tree‐ring cellulose (δ13Ccell, δ18Ocell) reveal long‐term, integrated physiological responses to environmental conditions. We incorporated a submodel of δ18Ocell into the widely used Physiological Principles in Predicting Growth (3‐PG) model for the first time, to complement a recently added δ13Ccell submodel. We...

Climate change is projected to impact ecosystem functioning, however its effect on the provision of ecosystem services is uncertain. This is particularly relevant on federal lands which harbor extensive tracts of natural vegetation. We assessed change in four ecosystem services (water runoff, groundwater recharge, carbon storage, and biodiversity) and one disservice (sediment export) in southern California between current and end-of-century (2070–2099). We used five general circulation models ranging from warmer wetter (CNRM-CM5, CCSM4) to hotter, marginally drier (IPSL-CM5A-LR) to hotter...

In this paper, we present a web-based decision support system (DSS)—wSADfLOR—to facilitate the access of stakeholders to tools that may contribute to enhancing forest management planning. The emphasis is on a web-based architecture and a web graphic user interface (wGUI) that may effectively support the analysis of trade-offs between ecosystem services in order to address participatory and sustainable forest management objectives. For that purpose, the wGUI provides remote access to a management information system, enabling users to analyze environmental and biometric data and topological...

Live trapping is a common tool used to assess demography of small mammals. However, live-trapping is often expensive and stressful to captured individuals. Thus, assessing the relative tradeoffs among study goals, project expenses, and animal well-being is necessary. Here, we evaluated how apparent bias and precision of estimates for apparent annual survival, abundance, capture probability, and recapture probability of Humboldt’s flying squirrels (Glaucomys oregonensis) varied with the number of secondary trapping occasions. We used data from forested sites trapped on 12 consecutive...

The Arctic and boreal regions are warming more than twice as rapidly as the rest of the world. The timing of plants’ flowering and fruiting is changing, with implications for insects, wildlife, and people who rely on these resources for food and livelihoods in Alaska. Alaska’s boreal forest will undergo significant functional and structural changes within the next few decades that are unprecedented in the past 6,000 years. The Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research program is critical to Forest Service research because it is the only Forest Service outpost in the boreal forest, which...