Treesearch

Recent increases in demand have revitalized interest and controversy surrounding use limits and the effect of visitor density on wilderness experiences. A workshop held in Missoula, Montana, in June of 2000 addressed the potential for social science to contribute to understanding and managing increasingly populated wilderness conditions. Scientists identified progress in our understanding of use density impacts on the wilderness visitor. Management frameworks such as Limits of Acceptable Change have proven beneficial in assisting managers. Science has also advanced the ability to assess...

Considerable research on the relationship between use density and wilderness visitor experiences has been conducted over the past four decades. This paper focuses on early work on this topic, tracing the development and languishing of different research themes suggested by this early work. Research—particularly that conducted in the normative tradition—has contributed useful information to managers grappling with the imposition of use limits. However, traditional research approaches need to be supplemented with research conducted at both smaller and larger scales. Research on the opinions...

Land managers need accurate and quick techniques to identify suitable habitat of species of interest. For species protected by federal or state laws, identification of suitable habitat is critical for developing a conservation strategy that includes reestablishing populations and altering management to address this need. In this research, we quantified vegetative and edaphic habitat of the western prairie fringed orchid (Platanthera praeclara Sheviak and Bowles), a federally listed threatened plant. Lowlands (swales) that supported orchids in our southeastern North Dakota study area were...

Adaptive management (AM is the process of implementing land management activities in incremental steps and evaluating whether desired outcomes are being achieved at each step. If conditions deviate substantially from predictions, management activities are adjusted to achieve the desired outcomes. Thus, AM is a kind of monitoring, an activity that land management agencies have done poorly for the most part, at least with respect to ground-based monitoring. Will they do better in the future? We doubt it unless costs, personnel, and future commitment are seriously addressed. Because ecosystem...

Restoration projects are often developed with little consideration for understanding their effects on wildlife. We contend, however, that monitoring treatment effects on wildlife should be an integral component of the design and execution of any management activity, including restoration. Thus, we provide a conceptual framework for the design and implementation of monitoring studies to understand the effects of restoration on wildlife. Our underlying premise is that effective monitoring hinges on an appropriate study design for unbiased and precise estimates of the response variables. We...

This report describes results of research conducted in Washington in 2000 through Interagency Agreement #134100H002 between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS). The purpose of this agreement is to develop a bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) sampling protocol by integrating and interpreting various types and sources of bull trout sampling efficiency, habitat association, and probability of detection databases. In this report, we also contrast Washington results with related research conducted by RMRS scientists and...

This report describes results of research sponsored through an interagency agreement between the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (Interagency Agreement #00-IA-11222014-521). The primary objectives of this research included 1) develop models relating occurrence of two threatened inland salmonid fishes to stream temperature regimes; 2) develop a comprehensive protocol for sampling stream temperatures using digital data loggers. The two species of interest were bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) and Lahontan cutthroat trout...

Our goal was to describe and evaluate patterns of association between stream size and abundances of amphibians and small mammals in a northwestern California watershed. We sampled populations at 42 stream sites and eight upland sites within a 100- watershed in 1995 and 1996. Stream reaches sampled ranged from poorly defined channels that rarely flowed to 10-m-wide channels with perennial flow. The majority of reaches flowed only intermittently. Aquatic vertebrates were sampled by conducting area-constrained surveys, and terrestrial vertebrates were sampled along three 45-m-long transects...

We specify accuracy standards for remotely sensed classifications used by FIA to stratify landscapes into two categories: forest and nonforest. Accuracy must be highest when forest area approaches 100 percent of the landscape. If forest area is rare in a landscape, then accuracy in the nonforest stratum must be very high, even at the expense of accuracy in the forest stratum. Accuracy in both strata must be at least 90 percent to achieve appreciable gains in efficiency. We recommend that new remotely sensed data be used to re-stratify landscapes whenever the area in forestland decreases by...

The 53 papers in this proceedings include a section celebrating the 25-year anniversary of the Shrub Sciences Laboratory (4 papers), three sections devoted to themes, genetics, and biodiversity (12 papers), disturbance ecology and biodiversity (14 papers), ecophysiology (13 papers), community ecology (9 papers), and field trip section (1 paper). The anniversary session papers emphasized the productivity and history of the Shrub Sciences Laboratory, 100 years of genetics, plant materials development for wildland shrub ecosystems, and current challenges in management and research in wildland...