Articles

Integrated plant functional strategies arise via selection on trait combinations and genes that encode multiple traits.

Post-fire seeding in drylands often has low success rates that are likely to be improved by seeding at higher rates and/or across multiple years in order to hit years with suitable precipitation.

Understory plant communities can be bolstered in the wake of spruce beetle outbreaks. The magnitude of change can depend on the amount of spruce mortality, the frequencies of understory species present at the time of the outbreak, and understory species’ traits.

Scientists found that warmer sites could see up to 5 generations of beetles in a single year, whereas cooler sites would only see 2 generations. More beetle generations translates to more pinyon pine mortality.

We can now quantify (from space!) that following high-severity wildfire events, the mastication of undesirable brush species can result in less evapotranspiration and increases in soil moisture. This information will help managers concerned with water security and forest health in Arizona.

We are working with partners to use cutting-edge technology to study the impacts of a large-scale juniper removal project. This collaborative effort is supporting biomass markets, soil moisture sensing, and real-time drought monitoring in central Arizona.

Conducting prescribed burns in the spring rather than the fall may help promote soil carbon storage.

Lidar is an excellent remote sensing technology to use for mapping fuels and estimating consumption at scales ranging from individual trees to the globe.

The emerald ash borer, which is not a native insect in the United States, spreads very fast in the eastern United States but very slowly in Colorado.

Species mixing in pine-oak forests can help to buffer trees from drought stress, but this positive effect is dependent on the ecosystem and species being studied.

Forests provide tremendous economic value to communities and the nation. They provide timber, safe clean drinking water, recreation opportunities, and countless other benefits. However, these values are missing or undercounted in the nation's economic statistics (for example, in GDP).Forest Service researchers developed the first ever environmental-economic statistics for the United States. Nat...

Managing wildfires for resource benefit can create diverse fire patterns across the landscape that maximize both plant and animal species richness, with different taxa benefiting from different fire characteristics.

We found that most Engelmann spruce seedlings we sourced from Canada all the way down to New Mexico can survive being planted at a high elevation site in Colorado but they differ in the amount that they grow after 45 years.

Fishers were successfully moved from the Midwest established in the Northern Rocky Mountains, but remain genetically distinct from local populations.

Using tree-ring data we reconstructed fire size within our study area, which was then calibrated with recent fire perimeters. Having a complete area-burned reconstruction for the past 300 years we found that the 20-year rate of burning in our study area in the Gila wilderness is now similar to pre-1900 area burned rates.

A new review describes how conifers react to various forest insects and diseases of the western United States and illustrates what remote sensing technologies are available for detecting conifer responses.

America's wildlife are increasingly experiencing drought with southwest birds already showing declines during dry years.

We provide a roadmap for incorporating animal communities clearly into opportunities for ecological integrity monitoring using new advances in monitoring technology, data availability, statistical methods, and computation power.

Subalpine prey, plants, and the snowy habits that support them likely help the endangered Sierra Nevada red fox coexist with widespread generalist carnivores. More information about the status and trends of these key prey species, especially white-tailed jackrabbits and snowshoe hares, are important for conservation of specialist montane carnivores, such as the Sierra Nevada red fox.

Fire weather, treatment design, and surface fuel load all influence potential fire severity, but when restoration treatments integrate small tree removal, they are as effective as fuel hazard reduction treatments at reducing fire behavior and effects.