Treesearch

Fuel treatments are designed with multiple management goals, including improving suppression capacity and restoring the historical structure of dry forests. Fuelbreaks are a class of fuel treatment that remove fuels within a wide strip of land, with an overarching objective to reduce fire behavior and provide safe access for suppression. In an empirical analysis of shaded fuelbreaks that burned during the 2014 Bald Fire (15,950 ha on the Lassen National Forest, California, USA), we found that overall fire severity was reduced in the treated areas relative to untreated. A non-linear mixed...

Piling and burning is widely used to dispose of unmerchantable debris resulting from thinning in forests throughout the western United States. Quite often more piles are created than are burned in a given year, however, causing piles to persist, accumulate, and age on the landscape. The effects of burning piles of increasing age has not been studied. We examined the effects of time since construction (i.e., pile age, in roughly six month increments for two years) and burn season (fall and spring) on fuelbed properties, combustion dynamics, fuel consumption, and charcoal formation for...

Long-term conservation planning for diadromous fishes would benefit from a better understanding of both the role of connectivity among environments and habitat variability in the expression of life-history diversity. Most of the scientific knowledge on habitat fragmentation and connectivity has been developed in terrestrial systems in the discipline of landscape ecology. Research on habitat connectivity in aquatic systems (e.g., salmonid research that spans the spectrum of habitats from freshwater to the sea) is uncommon and largely focused on barriers to fish passage. Here, we present a...

The Pacific marten once ranged throughout coastal forests of the Pacific Northwest, but by the late 1940s, it was thought to be extinct. In 1996, however, a population was found in northern California. This member of the mustelid family, which includes weasels and fishers, depends on diverse, mixed-conifer forests with a dense understory of salal and other shrubs. Habitat loss, forest fragmentation, disease, trapping, and fatality from collisions with motor vehicles have contributed to the decline of the Humboldt marten, a subspecies found in limited areas of coastal Oregon.Conservation...

The federally threatened northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) has been intensively studied across its range, and habitat needs for the species have influenced forest management in northwestern North America for decades. Dense forest canopies are often reported in the scientific literature and agency management plans as an important habitat attribute for spotted owls, though the means of measuring forest canopy and interpreting species requirements vary across studies and more importantly, among management plans. We used light detection and ranging (lidar) measurements of...

The success or failure of fish populations in rivers is intimately linked to a complex and interconnected series of ecological interactions. This complexity can make it difficult to predict how organisms within river ecosystems will respond to management actions and other environmental changes. To aid in solving this dilemma, we constructed a food web simulation model termed the Aquatic Trophic Productivity (ATP) model. The ATP model mechanistically links the success of fish populations to the dynamics of river food webs and the abiotic conditions that influence these webs. This report...

As central components of food webs worldwide, amphibians provide vital ecosystem services. The continental United States alone has 230 amphibian species and is the world hotspot for salamander species. However, this amphibian biodiversity is threatened by Batrachochytrium salamandrivorans (Bsal), a fungal pathogen native to Asia that spread to Europe and is killing fire salamanders in the wild. Laboratory testing has shown several North American species are also vulnerable to Bsal infection. The spread of Bsal is a chief concern, and at this time, it is highly probable Bsal will appear in...

In ponderosa pine forests of western North America, wildfires are becoming more frequent and affecting larger areas, while prescribed fire is increasingly used to reduce fuels and mitigate potential wildfire severity. Both fire types leave trees that initially survive their burn injuries, but will eventually die. Predicting delayed tree mortality has received considerable research attention to aid in post-fire planning and management. The amount of crown scorched is recognized as the most useful variable for discriminating between trees that live or die, but models gain discrimination with...

This is a Commentary for the 50th Anniversary Issue of Herpetological Review on the Diseases section of the journal which I initiated in December 2007. This section aimed to accelerate the pace and communication of science findings relative to herpetological emerging infectious diseases. Since the section was launched in late 2007, 185 disease articles by 594 authors have been published, including reports on seven disease-causing agents and a geographic scope spanning 42 countries and 35 US states. A world community has engaged in this work, empowering land managers, local biologists, the...

We examined the relationship between urban trees and the sales price of single-family homes in Tampa, Florida. We chose Tampa, because the city is facing major redevelopment pressure that may impact the association between trees and house price. In particular, a frequently voiced view in Tampa’s development community is that trees adversely affect the value of houses that are being sold for redevelopment. We estimated hedonic models of sales price controlling for house and neighborhood characteristics and correcting for spatial autocorrelation (n = 1,924). We found that trees within 152m...