Treesearch

Growing concern over sustainability of central ldaho forests has created a need to assess the health of forest stands on a relative basis. A stand hazard rating was developed as a composite of 11 individual ratings to compare the health hazards of different stands. The composite rating includes Douglas-fir beetle, mountain pine beetle, western pine beetle, spruce beetle, Douglas-fir tussock moth, western spruce budworm, dwarf mistletoes, annosus root disease, Swhweinitzii root and butt rot, and wildfire. The interacting effects of these agents were also considered.

A search was conducted for quantitative Idaho research results on the effectiveness of the Idaho Forest Practices Act rules and regulations pertaining to timber harvest and forest road construction and maintenance. These rules and regulations are designated as the "best management practices" for the prevention of nonpoint source pollution from silviculture under the provisions of the Federal Clean Water Act. For each practice, the relevant research results are summarized; more general summaries for related groups of practices are also provided.

Age structure in a stand of very old-age Engelmann spruce is described. The site is at 3,505 m near treeline in the Fraser Experimental Forest in central Colorado. The site contains the oldest Engelmann spruce trees yet reported in the literature; the oldest tree is at least 852 years of age.

Bull trout Salvelinus confluentus and other salmonids in the Pacific Northwest are believed at risk of local and regional extinctions because of ongoing habitat loss and fragmentation. Biologists have focused on defining and protecting critical stream channel characteristics, but there is little information regarding the scale or spatial geometry of habitat that may be necessary for the species long-term persistence. We investigated the influence of habitat patch size on the occurrence of bull trout by determining the presence or absence of fish in naturally fragmented watersheds of the...

Interest in the new philosophy of ecosystem management led the Forest Service to sponsor a study of past land use in The Lone Mountain/San Rafael Valley Ecosystem Project Area, part of the Sierra Vista Ranger District of Coronado National Forest in southern Arizona. To better understand the cumulative impacts on the study area, the agency requested an historical chronology of human occupation of the area, with a focus on natural resource use and an analysis of the impacts of historic land use. This document describes that use over the period from Euroamerican contact to the 20th century.

This report characterizes the distribution of abandoned and inactive mines throughout the United States. The assessment is based on nonconfidential portion of the Minerals Availability System (MAS) database compiled by the U.S. Department of Interior, Bureau of Mines. The data provide a reasonable estimate of the minimum number and types of mines on or near National Forest System lands.

This study assessed the impact of climatic change on the forestry sector and carbon storage on timberlands. Productivity changes reflected ecosystem sensitivities to temperature, precipi tation, and nutrient availability. The largest increases in net primary production (NPP) occurred in the northerly ecosystems, and the least response to climate change occurred in timber management types in the southern regions. Increased timber inventories decreased prices, imports, and shifted production to low cost regions. In this analysis, only the most optimistic scenario shifts future forests from...

Progress is summarized on development of tree-ring chronologies (Sieg et al., In press), preliminary analyses on the relationship between annual tree-ring widths and both precipitation and soil moisture (Ni 1993), and efforts to identify climatic regions (Bunkers 1993) and drought patterns (Bunkers et al. 1993) from climatic records.

Research accomplishments of the Interior West Global Change Program are outlined herein, and workshop participants discussed management implications of the results. Action to be taken now includes establishing monitoring systems to detect changes and guide management, and to maintain resilient ecosystems capable of responding successfully to change in any direction.

This executive summary, a companion to RM-GTR-270, Summary of Technical Testimony in the Colorado Water Division 1 Trial, is intended primarily for managers. The Colorado Water Division 1 water rights trial was one of the most significant federal reserved instream flow water rights cases to occur since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in the case of United States v. New Mexico in 1978. This short document summarizes the history of federal reserved water rights, outlines the major issues argued in the case, and presents the court's decision.