Treesearch

New technology has given scientists the means to probe the hidden world of belowground hydrology. Steve Wondzell with the Pacific Northwest Research Station and his colleagues conducted several experiments in Montana’s Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest and Oregon’s H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest to determine which factors control the timing and location of water inputs from hillslopes to streams, the movement of water down the stream channel, and the consequences of these processes on watershed outputs. They found that the configuration of uplands draining into a watershed strongly...

Amino acids play an important role in ecology as essential nutrients for animals and as currencies in symbiotic associations. Here we present a new approach to tracing the origins of amino acids by identifying unique patterns of carbon isotope signatures generated by amino acid synthesis in plants, fungi, and bacteria ("13C fingerprints"). We measured amino acid ∂13C from 10 C3 plants, 13 fungi, and 10 bacteria collected and isolated from a boreal forest in interior Alaska, USA, using gas chromatography combustion-isotope ratio mass spectrometry (GC-C-IRMS). Microorganisms were cultured...

Information in this short course summarizes the state-of-the science for natural resource managers and decisionmakers regarding climate variability, change, climate projections, and ecological and management responses to climate variability. The information and talks included were produced from a July 2008 workshop at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest that brought together key U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Geological Survey scientists, and a select group of pioneering resource managers who served as reviewers and discussant. This publication is only available on DVD. Please contact us to...

A comprehensive numerical modeling framework was developed to estimate the effects of collective global changes upon ozone pollution in the US in 2050. The framework consists of the global climate and chemistry models, PCM (Parallel Climate Model) and MOZART-2 (Model for Ozone and Related Chemical Tracers v.2), coupled with regional meteorology and chemistry models, MM5 (Mesoscale Meteorological model) and CMAQ (Community Multi-scale Air Quality model). The modeling system was applied for two 10-year simulations: 1990–1999 as a present-day base case and 2045–2054 as a future case. For the...

Understanding how rural communities use and depend upon local natural resources is a critical factor in developing policies to sustain the long-term viability of human and natural systems. Such “community-resource” linkages are particularly important in Alaska, where rural communities – many of them comprised of indigenous Alaskan Natives – are highly dependent upon local resources found on public lands. Alaskan communities utilize forests in many ways. To better understand these coupled “social-ecological” systems, we combined socio-economic data from the 2000 U.S. Census with timber...

Wildfire simulation models are being widely used by fire and fuels specialists in the U.S. to support tactical and strategic decisions related to the mitigation of wildfire risk. Much of this application has resulted from the development of a minimum travel time (MTT) fire spread algorithm (M. Finney) that makes it computationally feasible to simulate thousands of fires and generate burn probability and intensity maps over large areas (10,000 to 2,000,000 ha). The MTT algorithm is parallelized for multi-threaded processing and is imbedded in a number of research and applied fire modeling...

The recent dramatic impacts of bark beetle outbreaks across conifer forests of the West have been mapped and reported by entomology and pathology professionals with Forest Health Protection (FHP), a component of USDA Forest Service's State and Private Forestry, and their state counterparts. These forest conditions set the stage for the formation of the Western Bark Beetle Research Group (WBBRG), comprised of research scientists within the three western research stations of the USDA Forest Service Research and Development. Facing the increasing bark beetles impacts, the newly formed WBBRG,...

Bark beetles are powerful agents of change in dynamic forest ecosystems. Most assessments of the effects of bark beetle outbreaks have been based on negative impacts on timber production. The positive effects of bark beetle activities are much less well understood. Bark beetles perform vital functions at all levels of scale in forest ecosystems. At the landscape level they influence forest regeneration, and at the stand level they kill mature trees thus creating gaps and forest openings that are beneficial to wildlife. They also cause overall increases in forest and stand resiliency by...

This field trip guide explores the interactions among the geologic evolution, hydrology, and fluvial geomorphology of the central Oregon Cascade Range. Key topics include the geologic control of hydrologic regimes on both the wet and dry sides of the Cascade Range crest, groundwater dynamics and interaction between surface and groundwater in young volcanic arcs, and interactions between rivers and lava flows. As we trace the Willamette and McKenzie Rivers back to source springs high in the young volcanic rocks of the Cascade Range, there is abundant evidence for the large permeability of...

Due to increases in tree density and hazardous fuel loading in Sierra Nevadan forests, land management is focusing on fuel reduction treatments to moderate the risk of catastrophic fires. Fuel treatments involving mechanical and prescribed fire methods can reduce surface as well as canopy fuel loads. Mastication is a mechanical method which shreds smaller trees and brush onto the surface fuel layer. Little data exist quantifying masticated fuel beds. Despite the paucity of data on masticated fuels, land managers desire fuel loading, potential fire behavior and fire effects such as free...