Treesearch

Northern Spotted Owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) are of management and conservation concern in the US Pacific Northwest where populations have been monitored since the 1990s using mark-resight methods. Passive acoustic monitoring has the potential to support monitoring efforts; however, its use is currently primarily restricted to determining species presence rather than breeding status. Distinguishing female from male Northern Spotted Owl vocalizations could facilitate determination of pair status using passive acoustic methods, greatly enhancing inference derived from noninvasive...

Silvicultural establishment practices can influence survival and growth of the succeeding stand, including effects on stand productivity and plant community composition. Vegetation control and logging-debris manipulation are two common practices that influence reforestation success, but their effectiveness is likely to vary with soil quality and its influence on plant resource supply. We established an experimental manipulation of logging debris (removed, retained, or piled) and vegetation control (initial site preparation or annual herbicide application for 5 years) at two sites that...

Healthy, productive ecosystems require diverse plant populations that are adapted to the climates in which they are growing. The concept of local adaptation has been recognized as a critical component to reforestation success and forest productivity for nearly a century, leading to the development of seed zones for forest trees and, more recently, nontree restoration species. Fixed-boundary seed zones, however, assume that climates are static over time, which is no longer the case.

In the upper Midwest, climate change is expected to result in longer periods of drought during the growing season and increased summer temperatures. These pose a particular threat to seedlings, both natural and artificial regeneration, which are more susceptible to drought than mature trees. Biochar, a product created through pyrolysis of organic material (including wood and wood waste), has been proposed as a soil amendment that can both increase the water-holding capacity of soil (and therefore increase the drought tolerance of seedlings in that soil) and increase carbon storage. In this...

Habitat restoration to recover fish populations takes place worldwide, yet studies of its efficacy are fraught with challenges. One difficulty comes from studies of fish responses that are too focused on whether abundance has increased in the restored habitat, limiting the methodology to observational data of fish density. However, many other tools are available for evaluation of restoration. I review a set of conceptually based methods that colleagues and I used to assess restoration efficacy in a model river system to show the strength of considering alternative approaches. Although it...

Smoke from wildland fire is a significant concern to resource managers who need tools, knowledge, and training to analyze, address, and minimize potential impacts; follow relevant rules and regulations; and inform the public of possible effects. Successful navigation of competing pressures to appropriately use fire on the landscape to manage fire-adapted and fire-dependent ecosystems, while protecting public health and other air quality values, depends on credible science and tools conceived of and developed in partnership between managers and the research community. Fire and smoke...

This open access book synthesizes current information on wildland fire smoke in the United States, providing a scientific foundation for addressing the production of smoke from wildland fires. This will be increasingly critical as smoke exposure and degraded air quality are expected to increase in extent and severity in a warmer climate. Accurate smoke information is a foundation for helping individuals and communities to effectively mitigate potential smoke impacts from wildfires and prescribed fires. The book documents our current understanding of smoke science for (1) primary physical,...

Recent large wildfires in the USA have exposed millions of people to smoke, with major implications for health and other social and economic values. Prescribed burning for ecosystem health purposes and hazardous fuel reduction also adds smoke to the atmosphere, in some cases affecting adjacent communities. However, we currently lack an appropriate assessment framework that looks past the planned versus unplanned nature of a fire and assesses the environmental conditions under which particular fires burn, their socio-ecological settings, and implications for smoke production and management....

A science-management adaptation partnership was developed among the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area, Mount Hood National Forest, and Willamette National Forest, and other organizations (hereafter referred to as CMWAP) to identify climate change issues relevant for resource management in central Oregon and southern Washington). This partnership assessed the vulnerability of natural resources to climate change and developed adaptation options that minimize negative impacts of climate change and facilitate transition of ecosystems and organizations to a warmer climate. The vulnerabil...

The ability of forests to withstand, and recover from, acute drought stress is a critical uncertainty regarding the impacts of climate change on the terrestrial carbon (C) cycle, but it is unclear how drought responses scale from individual trees to whole forests. Here, we assembled a dataset of tree-ring chronologies co-located within the footprint of eddy covariance towers across North America and Europe, with the aim of quantifying the sensitivity of tree radial growth versus gross primary productivity (GPP) during and following drought. We found that drought induced a large decoupling...