Treesearch

Land and resource management issues in the Sierra Nevada are becoming increasingly complex and controversial. The objective of the Sierra Nevada Science Symposium was to provide a synoptic overview of the current state of scientific knowledge related to key management issues. Attempts were made to tie recent scientific findings to applications in land management and policy development. The symposium addressed four primary objectives: to highlight ecological research and monitoring activities ongoing in the Sierra Nevada; to provide access for all interested parties to information on...

This established RNA is on the San Dimas Experimental Forest, within the Angeles National Forest. It is approximately 6 miles (10 km) N. of the city of Claremont. It occupies portions of seven sects. in T1N, R8W SBBM (34°12'N., 117°43'W.), USGS Mt. Baldy quad. Ecological subsection – San Gabriel Mountains (M261Bd).

This established RNA is located on the Shasta- Trinity National Forest. The area is about 6.5 miles (10.5 km) N. of McCloud and occupies portions of sects. 33, 34, 35, and 36 T41N, R3W MDBM (41°21'N., 122°10'W.), USGS Mt. Shasta quad. Ecological subsection – High Cascades (M261Df).

The severity of recent fire seasons in the United States has provided dramatic evidence of the increasing complexity of wildfire problems. A wide variety of indicators suggest worsening dilemmas: extent of area burned, ecosystems at risk, funds expended, homes destroyed or evacuated, and human fatalities and injuries; all seem to be on the increase or have peaked in recent years. The National Fire Plan (and ongoing initiatives by the USDA Forest Service and Department of Interior) and President Bush’s Healthy Forest Initiative in response to the 2002 fire season have stimulated heightened...

Climate constitutes one of the great determinants of all natural environments. As such, it goes a long way in accounting for the distributions of the plant and animal species that inhabit the Sierra Nevada today. Most land managers are well aware that climate has changed over geologic time—indeed, one needs to look no farther than the polished rock of high Sierra Nevadan canyons to see evidence that a climate conducive to large-scale glaciations existed in the past. And most land managers accept that these past climate changes must have brought about shifts in distributions of the biota....

The study of changing vegetation patterns within forested communities of the Sierra Nevada has had a long history, initiated by the great naturalist John Muir. More recently, paleoecologists, who study ecosystems of the past, have analyzed fossil plant remains recovered from lake and meadow sediments to understand the regional biogeography and disturbance history of Sierra Nevadan forests. This research on paleo-historical vegetation associations has increasingly attracted the attention of land managers and others for several reasons, including the potential that future climate changes...

In the near future, the Sierra Nevada’s climate is projected to experience a new form of climate change due to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the global atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels and other human activities. If the changes occur, they presumably will be added to the large interannual and longer-term climate variations in the recent and distant past that have been described in this chapter. The projected changes include much-discussed warming trends as well as important changes in precipitation, extreme weather, and other climatic conditions, all of which...

In this chapter, we strive for something different. Whereas a goal of the other sessions at the Sierra Nevada Science Symposium was to present new research on familiar themes, our goal in the session "Climate and Landscape Change Over Time" was to introduce a topic that itself is likely unfamiliar to many resource scientists and managers. The limited discourse to date between the fields of climatology and resource ecology is surprising for two reasons. First, in the past two decades, there has been a revolution in research on climatology that has led to dramatic new understanding about the...

This established RNA is on the Six Rivers National Forest. It lies about 3 miles (5 km) N. of Weitchpec, Humboldt County, covering portions of sects. 25 and 26 T10N, R4E HBM (41°14'N., 123°41'W.), USGS Weitchpec quad. Ecological subsections – Gasquet Mountain Ultramafics (M261Ab) and Eastern Franciscan (M261Ba).

The policy and institutional dimensions addressed in this symposium were diverse and somewhat diffuse. Each panel was developed to include a political, policy, and institutional perspective. Some of these perspectives were shared from a policy-maker's point of view, others from the view of scientific and technical managers with responsibility for integrating science into planning and management. Others represented a science practitioner’s view on how and under what conditions the policy world might absorb, integrate, and respond to new information.