Treesearch

Landscape values mapping has been widely employed as a form of public participation GIS (PPGIS) in natural resource planning and decision-making to capture the complex array of values, uses, and interactions between people and landscapes. A landscape values typology has been commonly employed in the mapping of social and environmental values in a variety of management settings and scales. We explore how people attribute meanings and assign values to special places on the Olympic Peninsula (Washington, USA) using both a landscape values typology and qualitative responses about residents’...

The perhumid coastal temperate rainforest (PCTR) of southeast Alaska has some of the densest soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks in the world (>300 Mg C ha-1) but the fate of this SOC with continued warming remains largely unknown. We quantified dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and carbon dioxide (CO2) yields from four different wetland types (rich fen, poor fen, forested wetland and cedar wetland) using controlled laboratory incubations of surface (10 cm) and subsurface (25 cm) soils incubated at 8 and 15 °C for 37 weeks. Furthermore, we used fluorescence characterization of DOC and laboratory...

The goal of this study was to use watershed characteristics derived from light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data to predict stream biogeochemistry in Perhumid Coastal Temperate Rainforest (PCTR) watersheds. Over a 2-day period, we sampled 37 streams for concentrations of dissolved C, N, P, major cations, and measures of dissolved organic matter quality (specific ultraviolet absorbance, SUVA254) and bioavailability. Random forest – classification and regression tree analysis showed that aboveground biomass and structure and watershed characteristics, inclusive of mean watershed slope and...

In this article we examine in-depth interviews with farmers (n=159) from nine Corn Belt states. Using a grounded theory approach, we identified a “soil stewardship ethic,” which exemplifies how farmers are talking about building the long-term sustainability of their farm operation in light of more variable and extreme weather events. Findings suggest that farmers’ shifting relationship with their soil resources may act as a kind of social-ecological feedback that enables farmers to implement adaptive strategies (e.g., no-till farming, cover crops) that build resilience in the face of...

In order for agricultural systems to successfully mitigate and adapt to climate change there is a need to coordinate and prioritize next steps for research and extension. This includes focusing on “win-win” management practices that simultaneously provide short-term benefits to farmers and improve the sustainability and resiliency of agricultural systems with respect to climate change. In the Northwest U.S., a collaborative process has been used to engage individuals spanning the research-practice continuum. This collaborative approach was utilized at a 2016 workshop titled “Agriculture in...

Forest genetics research in the Pacific Northwest began in the early 20th century with the establishment of the Douglas-Fir Heredity Study and the Wind River Arboretum. These early studies led to preference for native species for refoestation, and the delineation of seed collection guidelines and seed zones in the 1940s. The 1950s saw an increased interest in forest genetics and tree improvement as increased harvests led to an interest in production forestry and potential gains from applied genetics. Later decades saw the growth of tree improvement programs and the formation of cooperatives...

Summary 1. We investigated the potential of cross-scale interactions to affect the outcome of density reduction in a large-scale silvicultural experiment to better understand options for managing forests under climate change. 2. We measured tree growth and intrinsic water-use efficiency (iWUE) based on stable carbon isotopes (δ13C) to investigate impacts of density reduction across a range of progressively finer spatial scales: site, stand, hillslope position and neighbourhood. In particular, we focused on the influence of treatments beyond the boundaries of treated stands to include...

Coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) research highlights reciprocal interactions (or feedbacks) between biophysical and socioeconomic variables to explain system dynamics and resilience. Empirical models often are used to test hypotheses and apply theory that represent human behavior. Parameterizing reciprocal interactions presents two challenges for social scientists: (1) how to represent human behavior as influenced by biophysical factors and integrate this into CHANS empirical models; (2) how to organize and function as a multidisciplinary social science team to accomplish that...

Forest management in the face of fire risk is a challenging problem because fire spreads across a landscape and because its occurrence is unpredictable. Accounting for the existence of stochastic events that generate spatial interactions in the context of a dynamic decision process is crucial for determining optimal management. This paper demonstrates a method for incorporating spatial information and interactions into management decisions made over time. A machine learning technique called approximate dynamic programming is applied to determine the optimal timing and location of fuel...

Because wildfire size and frequency are expected to increase in many forested areas in the United States, organizations involved in forest and wildfire management could arguably benefit from working together and sharing information to develop strategies for how to adapt to this increasing risk. Social capital theory suggests that actors in cohesive networks are positioned to build trust and mutual understanding of problems and act collectively to address these problems, and that actors engaged with diverse partners are positioned to access new information and resources that are important...