Treesearch

Through their multiple functions, refuges may be important for stream-living fishes, particularly during stressful events such as seasonal low flow or drought. Coastal Cutthroat Trout Oncorhynchus clarkii clarkii is an ideal study organism to understand the importance of refuge. During seasonal low flow, lower water levels limit access to refuge and emigration, survival of fish is low, and predation risk is high. Under these conditions, we studied patterns of cover use from field observations and tested predictions from multiple hypotheses about cover use in a semi-natural experiment....

Reactive nitrogen (Nr) within smoke plumes plays important roles in the production of ozone, the formation of secondary aerosols, and deposition of fixed N to ecosystems. The Western Wildfire Experiment for Cloud Chemistry, Aerosol Absorption, and Nitrogen (WE-CAN) field campaign sampled smoke from 23 wildfires throughout the western U.S. during summer 2018 using the NSF/NCAR C-130 research aircraft. We empirically estimate Nr normalized excess mixing ratios and emission factors from fires sampled within 80 min of estimated emission and explore variability in the dominant forms of Nr...

Black spruce (Picea mariana) peatlands play important ecologic and economic roles in the temperate-boreal region of North America, providing a valuable timber resource while also performing important ecosystem functions. Climate models project decreases in the amount of snowfall received throughout the temperate-boreal region by 2100, as average wintertime temperatures increase. We used a paired-plot experimental design to assess the effect of snow removal on soil temperature and frost development at six forested peatland sites in northern Minnesota, USA, during the three winters from 2017...

Wildfire is an annual threat for many rural communities in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. In some severe events, evacuation is one potential course of action to gain safety from an advancing wildfire. Since most evacuations occur in a personal vehicle along the surrounding road network, the quality of this network is a critical component of a community’s vulnerability to wildfire. In this paper, we leverage a high-resolution spatial dataset of wildfire burn probability and mean fireline intensity to conduct a regional-scale screening of wildfire evacuation vulnerability...

Emissions from a stand replacement prescribed burn were sampled using an unmanned aircraft system (UAS, or “drone”) in Fishlake National Forest, Utah, U.S.A. Sixteen flights over three days in June 2019 provided emission factors for a broad range of compounds including carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter < 2.5 μm in diameter (PM2.5), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including carbonyls, black carbon, and elemental/organic carbon. To our knowledge, this is the first UAS-based emission sampling for a fire of this magnitude...

Beaver-related restoration is a process-based strategy that seeks to address wide-ranging ecological objectives by reestablishing dam building in degraded stream systems. Although the beaver-related restoration has broad appeal, especially in water-limited systems, its effectiveness is not yet well documented. In this article, we present a process-expectation framework that links beaver-related restoration tactics to commonly expected outcomes by identifying the set of process pathways that must occur to achieve those expected outcomes. We explore the contingency implicit within this...

Alaska is among northern high‐latitude regions where accelerated climate change is expected to impact streamflow properties, including seasonality and primary flow drivers. Evaluating changes to streamflow, including flood characteristics, across this large and diverse environment can be improved by identifying the distribution and influence of flow drivers. Using metrics of mean monthly streamflow data from 253 streamgages, seasonal flow regimes were clustered to guide identification of seasonal flow drivers and form hydrologic groups for identification of peak‐flow populations. Nine...

Managed forests generally produce high water quality, but degradation is possible via sedimentation if proper management is not implemented during forest harvesting. To mitigate harvesting effects on total watershed sediment yield, it is necessary to understand all processes that contribute to these effects. Forest harvesting best management practices (BMPs) focus almost exclusively on overland sediment sources, whereas in-and-near stream sources go unaddressed although they can contribute substantially to sediment yield. Thus, we propose a new framework to classify forest harvesting...

The Perdido Key beach mouse (Peromyscus polionotus trissyllepsis), Choctawhatchee beach mouse (P. p. allophrys), and St. Andrew beach mouse (P. p. peninsularis) are 3 federally endangered subspecies that inhabit coastal dunes of Alabama and Florida, USA. Conservation opportunities for these subspecies are limited and costly. Consequently, well‐targeted efforts are required to achieve their downlisting criteria. To aid the development of targeted management scenarios that are designed to achieve downlisting criteria, we developed a Bayesian network model that uses habitat characteristics to...

The Special Issue “Decision Support to Address Multiple Ecosystem Services in Forest Management Planning” includes nine research papers, two review papers, and a white paper presenting highlights of focused research initiatives. The papers provide a comprehensive framework for the analysis and review of advanced Decision Support Systems (DSS), which are multi-criteria decision approaches. Their emphasis is on how these methods and tools may contribute to address the multi-functionality of forests, to support scenario and trade-off analysis of ecosystem services, and to represent interests...