Treesearch

For the past four years, American Forests has focused much of its policy attention on forest health, highlighted by a forest health partnership in southern Idaho. The partnership has been hard at work trying to better understand the forests of the Inland West. Our goal has been to identify what is affecting these forests, why they are responding differently to climate stress than they did in the past, and what needs to be done to improve their health and resilience. Findings to date suggest that disruption of forest ecosystem processes and functions has significantly altered the natural...

While planners deal with landscape issues in forest health, silviculturists deal with the basic units of the landscape, forest stands. The silviculturist manipulates small-scale disturbances and needs appropriate management indicators. Disturbance agents and their effects are important to stand development and are therefore useful as management indicators. More studies are needed to improve our understanding of the spatial and temporal patterns associated with various agents. We propose use of a disturbance profile to quantify small-scale disturbance regimes.This multivariate descriptor...

The 1994 wildfires in the U.S. West have highlighted a problem of forest health and fuel buildups that has been increasing for decades. In many Western forest ecosystems, forest biomass per acre has risen substantially since the 1940s and many forests have dense, fire-prone understories. If current trends continue, there will be: 1) increasing risks to National Forest ecosystems from insects, disease, and conflagration events, 2) a rising toll of loss and degradation of watershed values and wildlife habitats from abnormally intense wildfires, as well as continued losses in the biological...

From ancient philosophies to present day science, the ubiquity of change and the process of transformation are core concepts. The primary focus of a recent white paper on disturbance ecology is summed up by the Greek philosopher Heraclitus who stated, "Nothing is permanent but change." Disturbance processes, such as fire, provide a window into the emerging world of nonequilibrium theory. In contrast to a steady state view of the world, nonequilibrium theory asserts that biological communities are always recovering from the last disturbance. Disturbance is somewhat of a misnomer, connoting...

Southern pine beetles have had great impacts on wilderness and other special management areas. Infestations have spread and affected adjacent [and, and they have disrupted the intended uses and goals desired for these areas. Coping with SPB in special management areas requires advance planning and management, then the use of new and integrated techniques for SPB risk reduction once the areas are established.

An often ignored tool to improve forest health is the application of genetics-Tree improvement programs in the Inland West utilize genetic principles to develop-seed transfer guidelines to avoid the problems associated with off-site plantings and to improve characteristics in conifers related to forest health. PC-based expert systems have been developed to aid in seed transfer in ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir. Genetic gains in adaptation, and insect and disease resistance, continue to be made in western white pine, western larch, ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir, and lodgepole pine. While...

Rocky Mountain juniper is an important habitat component in the northern Great Plains. These woodlands provide vertical and horizontal vegetative structure that enhances wildlife use. Ecological approaches to managing habitats require understanding relationships between wildlife species and succession in plant communities. We determined bird, small mammals and large mammals habitat use in seral stages of Rocky Mountain juniper woodlands along the Missouri River in South Dakota. Fifty-three bird species occurred in these woodlands. Bird species diversity averaged 2.7 across 24 study sites...

Congressional legislation emphasizes that public resource allocation should reflect the values citizens assign to those resources. Yet, information about assigned values and preferences of members of the public, including economic measures of value, required by decision makers is often incomplete or unavailable. Existing sources of information about the public's values, for use in resource allocation decisions and damage assessment, include existing markets, public surveys (including contingent valuation), and public involvement. Each of these sources has serious limitations.

Previously undisturbed sites in four different vegetation types were camped on for one night and for four nights. Changes in vegetation cover and vegetation height were measured after camping and one year later. Results are presented separately for different campsite zones-parts of the site where campers slept, cooked meals, and stored their packs. Just one night of camping was sufficient to cause evident impact in all four vegetation types, although the amount of impact varied significantly between zones and between vegetation types. Vegetation impact on campsites used four nights was...