Treesearch

Natural resource professionals are often tasked with weighing the benefits and costs of changes in ecosystem services associated with land management alternatives and decisions. In many cases, federal regulations even require land managers and planners to account for these values explicitly. Outdoor recreation is a key ecosystem service provided by national forests and grasslands, and one of significant interest to the public. This report presents the most recent update of the Recreation Use Values Database, based on an exhaustive review of economic studies spanning 1958 to 2015 conducted...

Southeast Alaska is a remote area, located approximately 700 miles north of Seattle, Washington. Most of the region’s goods are imported by barge, creating logistical and economic challenges not faced by many other parts of the United States. In this context, we used life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate the potential environmental impact on global warming potential (GWP) of converting home heating systems from heating oil to wood pellets in southeast Alaska. Once the current level (status quo) was established, we evaluated imported pellet utilization at 20-, 40- and 100-percent penetrati...

Contraction of native old forest can limit occurrence of old forest associated species, especially species with limited vagility. Patterns of size and distribution of remaining patches of old forest along with forest disturbance and what replaces old forest can influence whether species adapt or perish after forest loss. The arboreal red tree vole (Arborimus longicaudus) is a small arvicoline rodent that is associated with old coniferous forest and typically emigrates short distances. Since 1911, old forest (≥80 years old) in the northern half of the Oregon Coast Range has been reduced by...

Streams and rivers are important conduits of terrestrially derived carbon (C) to atmospheric and marine reservoirs. Leaf litter breakdown rates are expected to increase as water temperatures rise in response to climate change. The magnitude of increase in breakdown rates is uncertain, given differences in litter quality and microbial and detritivore community responses to temperature, factors that can influence the apparent temperature sensitivity of breakdown and the relative proportion of C lost to the atmosphere vs. stored or transported downstream. Here, we synthesized 1025 records of...

While advances in remote sensing have made stand, landscape, and regional assessments of the direct impacts of disturbance on forests quite common, the edge influence of timber harvesting on the structure of neighboring unharvested forests has not been examined extensively. In this study, we examine the impact of historical timber harvests on basal area patterns of neighboring old-growth forests to assess the magnitude and scale of harvest edge influence in a forest landscape of western Oregon, USA. We used lidar data and forest plot measurements to construct 30-m resolution live tree...

The phenology of diameter-growth cessation in trees will likely play a key role in mediating species and ecosystem responses to climate change. A common expectation is that warming will delay cessation, but the environmental and genetic influences on this process are poorly understood. We modeled the effects of temperature, photoperiod, and seed-source climate on diameter-growth-cessation timing in coast Douglas-fir (an ecologically and economically vital tree) using high-frequency growth measurements across broad environmental gradients for a range of genotypes from different seed...

This volume presents findings on, and implications for, wildlife conservation in the tropical forests in Garo Hills of Meghalaya state in the North East India. A companion volume presented the findings on forest fragmentation due to practice of slash and burn agriculture in the region. Both of the volumes summarize work completed over more than a decade on characterizing conditions of tropical forests in the Garo Hills of western Meghalaya State of North East India. The work has led to innovations in use of remote sensing information and tools and to suggestions for designing a protected...

Epiphytic lichens are bioindicators of climate, air quality, and other forest conditions and may reveal how forests will respond to global changes in the U.S. Pacific States of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California. We explored climate indication with lichen communities surveyed by using both the USDA Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) and Alaska Region (R10) methods. Across the Pacific States, lichen indicator species and ordination “climate scores” reflected associations between lichen community composition and climate. Indicator species are appealing targets for...

The Blue Mountains ecoregion (BME) extends from the Ochoco Mountains in central Oregon to Hells Canyon of the Snake River in extreme northeastern Oregon and adjacent Idaho, and then north to the deeply carved canyons and basalt rimrock of southeastern Washington (see fig. 1.1 in chapter 1). The BME consists of a series of mountain ranges occurring in a southwest to northeast orientation, allowing the BME to function ecologically and floristically as a transverse bridge between the Cascade Mountains province to the west, and the main portion of the middle Rocky Mountains province to the east.