Treesearch

We conducted an economic analysis of two case study stewardship contracts on the Mount Hood National Forest in western Oregon. Stewardship contracting has been embraced by some federal managers to achieve restoration goals while providing economic benefits to local communities. Little is known about economic contributions from stewardship contracts, including how they compare against Secure Rural Schools funding or the century-old payments to counties revenue sharing system. Using expenditure data from sale purchasers, contractors, and fiscal agents, we developed methodology to track...

In this chapter, we examine the scientific basis of the assumptions, management strategies, and goals of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP, or Plan) relative to the ecology of old-growth forests, forest successional dynamics, and disturbance processes. Our emphasis is on “coarse-filter” approaches to conservation (i.e., those that are concerned with entire ecosystems, their species and habitats, and the processes that support them) (Hunter 1990, Noss 1990). The recently published 2012 planning rule has increased emphasis on land management rooted in ecological integrity and ecosystem...

Climate Change and Rocky Mountain Ecosystems describes the results of a cutting-­edge effort to assess climate change vulnerabilities and develop adaptation options for ecosystems in the Northern Rocky Mountains region of the United States, focusing on national forests, grasslands, and parks in Northern Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Northern South Dakota, and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Building on a framework developed in previous subregional climate change efforts, the Northern Rockies Adaptation Partnership (NRAP) was the first regional-scale, multi-resource climate change...

Remote sensing studies indicate that slow and subtle degradation of forest canopies, or forest canopy declines, has increased in extent during recent decades, possibly due to hotter and drier droughts. However, it is difficult to collect consistent, high-quality time series of forest canopy decline occurrence observations needed for examining multi-year drought contributions to forest canopy decline at an annual scale. In this research, we leveraged a tool for visual interpretation of annual Landsat satellite imagery (TimeSync) and a hierarchical Bayesian time series modeling approach...

Statistically downscaled climate data have been widely used to explore possible impacts of climate change in various fields of study. Although many studies have focused on characterizing differences in the downscaling methods, few studies have evaluated actual downscaled datasets being distributed publicly. Spatially focusing on the Pacific Northwest, we compare five statistically downscaled climate datasets distributed publicly in the US: ClimateNA, NASA NEX-DCP30, MACAv2-METDATA, MACAv2-LIVNEH and WorldClim. We compare the downscaled projections of climate change, and the associated...

Multiple climate change vulnerability assessments in the Pacific Northwest region of the USA provide the scientific information needed to begin adaptation in forested landscapes. Adaptation options developed by resource managers in conjunction with these assessments, newly summarized in the Climate Change Adaptation Library of the Western United States, provide an extensive choice of peer-reviewed climate-smart management strategies and tactics. More adaptation options are available for vegetation than for any other resource category, allowing vegetation management to be applied across a...

The frequently observed forest decline in water-limited regions may be associated with impaired tree hydraulics, but the precise physiological mechanisms remain poorly understood. We compared hydraulic architecture of Mongolian pine (Pinus sylvestris var. mongolica) trees of different size classes from a plantation and a natural forest site to test whether greater hydraulic limitation with increasing size plays an important role in tree decline observed in the more water-limited plantation site. We found that trees from plantations overall showed significantly lower stem hydraulic efficienc...

Native bees are declining worldwide, but conserving or restoring their habitat requires a better understanding of bee-flower associations. High quality bee habitat includes flowers that provide pollen and nectar preferred by bees. However, little data exist about which plants are commonly used by bees in the Pacific Northwest, or whether bees prefer certain plant characteristics over others. We examined bee and plant communities in an Oregon riparian ecosystem. Our purpose was to describe bee-plant associations, determine which plants are most frequently visited by bees, identify plants...

Water availability is one of the most critical issues facing southern California. Consequently, the role and management of intact watersheds on public lands that supply water are paramount. We undertake the first regional study of climate impacts on hydrological services (runoff, recharge, and climatic water deficit) across the four national forests of southern California—the Angeles, Los Padres, Cleveland and San Bernardino. We assess the exposure, sensitivity, and vulnerability of water resources by comparing current conditions (1981–2010) to mid-century (2040–2069) and end-of-century...

The boreal biome represents approximately one third of the world’s forested area and plays an important role in global biogeochemical and energy cycles. Numerous studies in boreal Alaska have concluded that growth of black and white spruce is declining as a result of temperature-induced drought stress. The combined evidence of declining spruce growth and changes in the fire regime that favor establishment of deciduous tree species has led some investigators to suggest the region may be transitioning from dominance by spruce to dominance by deciduous forests and/or grasslands. Although...