Treesearch

1. Pulsed subsidy events create ephemeral fluxes of hyper-abundant resources that can shape annual patterns of consumption and growth for recipient consumers. However, environmental conditions strongly affect local resource availability for much of the year, and can heavily impact consumer foraging and growth patterns prior to pulsed subsidy events. Thus, a consumer's capacity to exploit pulse subsidy resources may be influenced by antecedent environmental conditions, but this has rarely been shown in nature and is unknown in aquatic ecosystems.2. Here, we sought to understand the importanc...

Spatial data metrics are commonly used to capture environmental quality for recreation and visitation studies. Spatial data and tools, such as viewshed analysis, provide methods to incorporate spatial attributes into nonmarket valuation studies of consumer preferences, like portraying changes in visual-sensory qualities (e.g., from wildfires). We review the use of viewsheds in the nonmarket valuation literature and summarize insights from viewshed-based studies in other disciplines. We offer a conceptual framework for how to incorporate viewsheds into recreation demand studies, including...

Elk (Cervus canadensis) are the second largest member of the deer family that reside in North America. Historically, the species occupied most of North America, however, today, they occupy only a small proportion of that range. Across their historical and contemporary distribution, they occupied diverse vegetation communities including both rangelands and forest ecosystems. Given this broad distribution, elk face numerous conservation and management threats including competition with wild and domestic ungulates, disease considerations, and human-elk conflicts. This chapter highlights these...

The fisheries and aquatic sciences confront complex challenges in the overexploitation and degradation of aquatic-riparian ecosystems worldwide. Although the field comprises diverse natural resources available to diverse groups, changing the human face of its workforce so that it closely reflects everyone who depends on those resources has been slow. Brooke Penaluna, a research fisheries biologist from the USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, and her collaborators analyzed data on the status of diversity and inclusion and investigated strategies to enhance these values...

Defoliating insects inflict costly damage to forests, sometimes at landscape scales. Outbreaks of the native Douglasf-ir tussock moth (Orgyia pseudotsugata) occur every 5 to 10 years in the western United States and southern British Columbia. The larvae feed on the needles of Douglas-fir, grand fir, or white fir trees. If the defoliation becomes severe enough, they will kill the infested trees. Widespread outbreaks can cause extensive damage, including leaving the forest susceptible to infestation by other insect pests or wildfire. Outbreaks typically end when a naturally occurring,...

New guidance for amped-up biosecurity warrants echoing to the wildlife management community via the magazine published through The Wildlife Society. Here, we highlight new, higher disinfectant concentrations to use to forestall inadvertent Bsal transmission and convey the importance of both disinfecting field gear and wearing gloves when handling reptiles owing to newly recognized non-native pathogens in North America.

Prescribed burning is a major source of a fine particular matter, especially in the southeastern United States, and quantifying emissions from burning operations accurately is an integral part of ascertaining air quality impacts. For instance, a critical factor in calculating fire emissions is identifying fire activity information (e.g., location, date/time, fire type, and area burned) and prior estimations of prescribed fire activity used for calculating emissions have either used burn permit records or satellite-based remote sensing products. While burn permit records kept by state...

Context Tidal saline wetlands (TSWs) are highly threatened from climate-change effects of sea-level rise. Studies of TSWs along the East Coast U.S. and elsewhere suggest significant likely losses over coming decades but needed are analytic tools gauged to Pacific Coast U.S. wetlands. Objectives We predict the impacts of sea-level rise (SLR) on the elevation capital (vertical) and migration potential (lateral) resilience of TSWs along the Pacific Coast U.S. over the period 2020 to 2150 under a 1.5-m SLR scenario, and identified TSWs at risk of most rapid loss of resilience. Here, we define...

The Ecosystem Management Decision Support (EMDS) system is a spatially enabled system for environmental analysis and strategic and tactical planning. EMDS combines various sophisticated analytical tools within a GIS environment. Originally released by the Pacific Northwest Research Station, USDA in 1997, EMDS has been maintained and actively extended since then. Building on its core functionality of logic processing and decision modeling and availability as an ArcMap component, recent advances include more advanced geodatabase processing, integration with open-source GIS platforms,...

While there have been a host of studies investigating the COVID-19 pandemic’s influence on outdoor recreation, few have investigated the socio-demographic composition and motivations of visitors who increased their outdoor recreation during this period and if these users will continue recreating at the same level as the pandemic wanes. This study surveyed visitors to the Nantahala and Pisgah National Forests (NPNF) within the US state of North Carolina to identify if rising outdoor recreation participation is solely a result of the pandemic or more indicative of a renaissance. Demographic...