Treesearch

Vegetation was sampled inside and outside eight exclosures in salt desert shrub and sagebrush vegetation types in Southwestern Wyoming and eight exclosures in aspen vegetation in southern Utah. Only species richness has been examined thus far. Five of the eight Wyoming exclosures had an average of 11% more plant species present outside the exclosure than inside.

Aspen (Populus tremuloides) are in decline throughout the interior western U.S. because of conifer invasion, fire suppression, and overbrowsing by domestic livestock and native ungulates. Aspen restoration requires disturbances such as fire or cutting and exclosures to protect against overbrowsing. We measured the effects of the 1996 Pole Creek fire, Fishlake NF, UT on soil N mineralization/immobilization during the summer of 1997 using an ion exchange membrane (IEM) soil core incubation method. Two incubation periods were used: 6/25 to 7/22/97 (27 d) and 7/22 to 9/23/97 (63 d). Net soil N...

Land management based on sound science is key to increased productivity and biological diversity along the U.S./Mexico border in southeastern Arizona and southwestern New Mexico. The USDA Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station and the non-government Malpai Borderlands Group have sponsored studies and resource inventories in the region. A meeting in Douglas, Arizona, was held to inform the scientific, land management, and local communities of progress. These proceedings contain abstracts from the presentations. The reports cover a variety of topics including program overviews,...

The purpose of this workshop was to develop organizational networks to help achieve best practices in management and leadership of forest research and foster continuous learning toward that goal through organizational benchmarking. The papers and notes herein document the presentations and discussions of the workshop.

The seven papers in this proceedings address the current state of knowledge and application of ecological restoration in the Western United States. They provide an overview of: rangeland revegetation lessons as they apply to ecological restoration today; USDI National Park Service, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, and Forest Service restoration strategies and perspectives; biological factors for using native plant species; and the challenges of native seed collection, production, and marketing. These papers comprise the proceedings from a technical symposium at the 1997 Society...

Ground sample data were collected for a land cover database and raster map that portray 159 vegetation classes at 1 km2 resolution for the conterminous United States. Locations for 3,500 1 km2 ground sample plots were selected randomly across the United States. The number of plots representing each vegetation class was weighted by the proportionate coverage of each vegetation class. Field data collected for 2,560 of these plots included dominant vegetation species; coverage, height, and diameter estimates of major tree species; coverage, depth, and density estimates for shrubs and grasses;...

Small mammal literature from western Montana and the Northern Rocky Mountains was reviewed to assess the ecological role of small mammals on the Bitterroot National Forest of western Montana and in the Northern Rocky Mountains. The goal was to understand how small mammals relate to succession and how proposed ecosystem management goals would affect small mammals, the predators they support, and the roles they play in forest ecosystem functions. Small mammals fulfill numerous important roles in forest ecosystems by supporting a wide range of predators, dispersing seeds and mycorrhizal...

Idaho land managers and regulators need knowledge on riparian reference sites. Reference sites are ecological controls that can be used to set meaningful management and regulatory goals. Since 1984, the Idaho Conservation Data Center, Boise, ID, has compiled information in a series of interrelated databases on the distribution and condition of riparian, wetland, and terrestrial plant associations in high quality reference sites in Idaho. This report summarizes association-specific and reference area-specific information from our databases and presents a standardized classification of Idaho...

The Snake River Plain forms a 6 million ha arc-shaped depression across southern Idaho. Basalt flows, fresh water sediments, loess and volcanic deposits cover its surface. Elevation increases eastward from 650 to 2,150 m altitude. Climate is semi-arid with annual precipitation ranging from 150 to 400 mm, arriving primarily in winter and spring. Native shrub steppe vegetation is dominated by Artemisia tridentata (big sagebrush) and bunchgrasses, e.g. Pseudoregneria spicatum (bluebunch wheatgrass), Elymus (wildrye) and Poa (bluegrass) spp., with interspersed Purshia tridentata (antelope...

Fire scars result from the death of the vascular cambium resulting from excessive heating, which exposes sapwood to infection and initiates the wood decay process. In southeastern Ohio, prescribed fires in April 1995 and 1997 scarred Quercus prinus L. and Q. velutina Lam. Low-intensity fires scorched bark and produced scars, primarily on the downslope side of the stem. Eighteen scorched trees (4-23 cm at DBH) were dissected in November 1997, 14 of which had fire scars. The vascular cambium beneath natural bark fissures was most vulnerable to injury. No charred or scorched wood was associate...