Treesearch

Widespread bark beetle outbreaks are currently affecting multiple conifer forest types throughout western North America, yet many ecosystem-level consequences of this disturbance are poorly understood. We quantified the effect of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreak on nitrogen (N) cycling through litter, soil, and vegetation in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia) forests of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (WY, USA) across a 0-30 year chronosequence of time-since-beetle disturbance. Recent (1-4 years) bark beetle disturbance increased total litter depth and...

The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and its accompanying regulations provide a spectrum of alternative analytical pathways for federal agencies proposing major actions that might significantly impact the human environment. Although guidance from the President's council on Environmental Quality suggests the decision to develop an environmental impact statement (EIS), which requires the most rigorous level of analysis, should be based on the likelihood of significant environmental impacts, findings from an Internet survey with US Forest Service project leaders suggest that the...

Interdisciplinary teamwork has become a foundation of natural resources planning and management in the US. Yet, we know little about the degree of interdisciplinary collaboration of natural resource planning teams. We conducted 10 case studies of Forest Service NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) teams working on projects related to the 2005 Travel Management Rule. Although teams' critical tasks were similar, we found wide variation in interdisciplinary teamwork approaches. We propose three typologies of teamwork processes and discuss relationships between teams' work approaches and...

U.S. Forest Service managers are required to incorporate social and biophysical science information in planning and environmental analysis. The use of science is mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the National Forest Management Act, and U.S. Forest Service planning rules. Despite the agency's emphasis on "science-based" decisionmaking, little is known about how science is actually used in recreation planning and management. This study investigated the perceptions of Forest Service interdisciplinary team leaders for 106 NEPA projects dealing with recreation and travel...

Few studies have estimated the effect of environmental amenities on the rental price of houses. We address this gap in the literature by quantifying the effect of urban trees on the rental price of single-family homes in Portland, Oregon, USA. We found that an additional tree on a house's lot increased monthly rent by $5.62, and a tree in the public right of way increased rent by $21.00. These results are consistent with a previous hedonic analysis of the effects of trees on the sales price of homes in Portland, which suggests that homeowners and renters place similar values on urban trees.

Interdisciplinary (ID) teams were created by the US Forest Service in response to environmental legislation. In 2008, we surveyed 10 team leaders for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analysis of 106 recreation-related projects conducted between 2005 and 2008. Results were compared with current workforce data and previous studies of ID team leadership and composition for NEPA assessments. ID teams were large in size and diverse in composition, with representatives from a broad range of disciplines and functional areas. The composition of ID teams may be changing from traditional...

Developing appropriate management options for adapting to climate change is a new challenge for land managers, and integration of climate change concepts into operational management and planning on United States national forests is just starting. We established science-management partnerships on the Olympic National Forest (Washington) and Tahoe National Forest (California) in the first effort to develop adaptation options for specific national forests. We employed a focus group process in order to establish the scientific context necessary for understanding climate change and its anticipat...

Conifer crowns can be highly variable both within and between trees, particularly with respect to foliage biomass and leaf area. A variety of sampling schemes have been used to estimate biomass and leaf area at the individual tree and stand scales. Rarely has the effectiveness of these sampling schemes been compared across stands or even across species. In addition, sample size estimates for achieving a certain level of precision have rarely been given. This simulation study used extensive branch and tree foliage biomass data sets for Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var. menziesii...

There is substantial concern that bioenergy policies could swamp other considerations, such as environmental values, and lead to large-scale conversions of land from forest to crops. This study examines how bioenergy and marketed environmental rents for forestland potentially influence land use in the Midwestern US. We hypothesize that current land uses reflect market values for environmental benefits of forestland, so that the marketed component of the environmental value of land can be captured as the difference between Census land values and value of land as a timber asset. We use a...

Question: How can nearest-neighbour (NN) imputation be used to develop maps of multiple species and plant communities? Location: Western and central Oregon, USA, but methods are applicable anywhere. Methods: We demonstrate NN imputation by mapping woody plant communities for >100 000 km2 of diverse forests and woodlands. Species abundances on approximately 25,000 plots were related to spatial predictors (rasters) describing climate, topography, soil and geographic location using constrained ordination (CCA). Species data from the nearest plot in multi-dimensional CCA space were imputed to...