Treesearch

Fuel consumption specifies the amount of vegetative biomass consumed during wildland fire. It is a two-stage process of pyrolysis and combustion that occurs simultaneously and at different rates depending on the characteristics and condition of the fuel, weather, topography, and in the case of prescribed fire, ignition rate and pattern. Fuel consumption is the basic process that leads to heat absorbing emissions called greenhouse gas and other aerosol emissions that can impact atmospheric and ecosystem processes, carbon stocks, and land surface reflectance. It is a critical requirement for...

Martens, sables, and fishers are midsized carnivores belonging to the genus Martes. Their silky coats have been valued in the fur trade for centuries, which has contributed to a marked decline in their numbers. Pacific Northwest Martes species depend on structurally complex forested ecosystems and specific climatic conditions for their existence. The marten is designated as a Management Indicator Species on many national forests in Washington, Oregon, and California. The fisher (M. pennanti) is a Management Indicator Species in California and a candidate for listing as a federally endangere...

We georeferenced Western Pond Turtle (Actinemys marmorata) and Painted Turtle (Chrysemys picta) locality records in western North America, compiling diverse institutional data sets, including data from 9 US states and Canadian provinces. For the entire range of the Western Pond Turtle and the western range of the Painted Turtle, we assessed counts of distinct locations from historical data, and analyzed distribution patterns temporally and spatially. Western Pond Turtle observation records were compiled from year 1850 to 2011, and Painted Turtle records were compiled from 1805 to 2011. For...

The catastrophic fires and tragic losses during the 2013 fire season have resulted in many discussions about fire management policies aimed at protecting communities and restoring fire-resilient forests from the growing incidence of severe wildfires. Forest Service scientist Alan Ager has been exploring how concepts in spatial ecology and operations research can be used to better prioritize fuel management and restoration projects and design landscape fuel treatment strategies. This work has yielded a new model and software program called the Landscape Treatment Designer (LTD) and a case...

Smoke from wildfires has adverse biological and social consequences, and various lines of evidence suggest that smoke from wildfires in the future may be more intense and widespread, demanding that methods be developed to address its effects on people, ecosystems, and the atmosphere. In this paper, we present the essential ingredients of a modeling system for projecting smoke consequences in a rapidly warming climate that is expected to change wildfire regimes significantly. We describe each component of the system, offer suggestions for the elements of a modeling agenda, and provide some...

Communicating the scientific knowledge generated by the Pacific Northwest Research Station is integral to our mission. The 2013 Science Accomplishments reports highlights the breadth of the station’s research, the relevance of our science findings, and the application of these findings. The photographs throughout the report showcase the region where we work and how science is done.

A recent series of bark beetle outbreaks in the Rocky Mountain region of the U.S. is the largest and most intense ever recorded. Factors contributing to tree mortality from bark beetles are complex, but include aspects of forest stand condition. Because stand conditions respond to forest management, evaluating bark beetle-caused tree mortality and changes in forest structural attributes in areas previously subjected to management not only improves mechanistic understanding of beetle-caused changes in forests, but also improves prediction of future bark beetle responses to management...

This report provides new cost estimates for carbon sequestration through afforestation in the United States. We extend existing studies of carbon sequestration costs in several important ways, while ensuring the transparency of our approach. We clearly identify all components of our cost estimates so that other researchers can reconstruct our results as well as use our data for other purposes. Our cost estimates have five distinguishing features: (1) we estimate costs for each county in the contiguous United States; (2) we include afforestation of rangeland, in addition to cropland and...

Humans have intuitively understood the value of trees to their physical and mental health since the beginning of recorded time. A scientist with the Pacific Northwest Research Station wondered if such a link could be scientifically validated. His research team took advantage of an infestation of emerald ash borer, an invasive pest that kills ash trees, to conduct a study that gets closer to a definitive connection between the loss of trees and increased human mortality. Researchers analyzed data on demographics, tree loss from the emerald ash borer, and human mortality from lower respirator...

Aboveground growth rates of seedlings of bunchberry (Cornus canadensis L.), oval-leaf blueberry (Vaccinium ovalifolium Sm.), salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis Pursh), devilsclub (Oplopanax horridus (Sm.) Miq.), and western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla (Raf.) Sarg.) were compared in a study of their responses to an artificial light gradient in an Oregon greenhouse and in a study of response to overstory and soil type in a field manipulation experiment in southeast Alaska. Seedlings of all five species were grown independently under nine intensities of light for 156 days, and their oven-dry...