Treesearch

Background: Increasing wildfire area burned has left millions of hectares in the western United States (US) in need of reforestation. Recent federal legislation allows for increased investments in tree planting to address the backlog of planting needs in previously burned areas. To support post-fire planning and assessment, we developed Regenmapper, a web-based decision support system (DSS) that provides spatial information on natural regeneration potential within post-fire environments. The program is freely available from a web browser (https://alpheus.dbs.umt.edu/regenmapper/) and is...

Anthropogenic reshaping of landscapes can increase landslide activity. One example of heavily modified, landslide-prone landscapes is the Appalachian region, which hosts weak geologic strata, steep slopes, a humid climate, geologically recent river incision, and large-scale landscape modifications resulting from surface mining. Surface mining conducted before the Surface Mine Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA) of 1977 did not require reclamation to approximate original contour, so remnant highwalls and mine benches are common throughout Appalachia. This study investigated the occurrence...

The National Land Cover Database (NLCD), developed through the Multi-Resolution Land Characteristics Consortium, was initiated 30 years ago and has continually provided critical, Landsat-based land-cover and land-change information for the United States. Originally launched to address the lack of national-scale, moderate-resolution land-cover data, NLCD has evolved from the pioneering 1992 dataset into a comprehensive, annually updated product suite. Key innovations include the introduction of impervious surface mapping, forest canopy mapping, standardized Landsat mosaics, national-scale...

Environmental observation networks, such as AmeriFlux, are foundational for monitoring ecosystem response to climate change, management practices, and natural disturbances; however, their effectiveness depends on their representativeness for the regions or continents. We proposed an empirical, time series approach to quantify the similarity of ecosystem fluxes across AmeriFlux sites. We extracted the diel and seasonal characteristics (i.e., amplitudes, phases) from carbon dioxide, water vapor, energy, and momentum fluxes, which reflect the effects of climate, plant phenology, and ecophysiol...

The Enchantments area within the Alpine Lakes Wilderness has long been a popular recreation area, which has led the Forest Service to adopt an overnight permit system and, more recently, to consider a day-use permit system to balance recreation, resource protection, and visitor safety. The Enchantments area includes high-use trails such as those off of Icicle Rd, including Stuart Lake, Eightmile, and Snow Lakes. Current challenges facing managers include ensuring visitor safety, and mitigating crowding and impacts to nature. Current management strategies involve education, infrastructure...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides this resource update yearly as an overview of forest resources in Idaho. These estimates are derived from field data collected across a systematic network of fixed-radius forest monitoring plots located on both public and private land. New updates are provided annually as a subset of plots within the State are remeasured. Each year, field crews visit and measure a subset of all FIA plots across the entire State (the size of the subset varies by State and year). Combining all the...

Experts have acknowledged that there is “imperfect data on the full composition of the wildfire risk reduction, response, and recovery workforce.” In this paper, we improve upon the data available around the wildfire response workforce, specifically by quantifying the capacity and examining recent trends associated with this workforce. The fire response workforce is spread between federal, state, Tribal, local, and private agencies. While these sectors work together through a fire response system that emphasizes resource coordination, sharing, and interoperability, there is no one system...

In many fire-prone landscapes, protecting ecological values is an important objective of wildfire management. Here, we develop a mixed integer programming model for managing a network of linear fuel breaks to minimize wildfire impacts on the sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) core habitats in the northern Great Basin. The model uses simulated wildfires for 20,000 fire seasons, calibrated to historical fire occurrence data from 2006 to 2020. It coordinates treated fuel breaks to create opportunities to contain each simulated fire. Multiple treatment options with fuel break widths of 30 to 122 m are...

The genus Armillaria is a broad group of basidiomycete (Agaricales, Physalacriaceae) plant pathogens that can have detrimental effects on woody hosts in forested, urban, and horticultural landscapes. Several species are known as aggressive root pathogens on both conifers and deciduous woody plants. Armillaria species are considered white rot fungi due to their capacity to degrade both lignin and cellulose in woody tissues. Armillaria mexicana was recently described as a new species found in peach (Prunus persica) orchards of Coatepec Harinas, State of Mexico. However, a subsequent study...

To create conditions suitable for the recruitment of native forest species, tools are often needed to suppress grasses when restoring forests from abandoned pastureland. Planting trees is one method to reduce grass growth through shading and accumulation of leaf litter, while benefiting woody seedlings by moderating the microclimate. Nitrogen-fixing trees are often planted in tropical reforestation work because of their fast growth rates and ability to enrich soil nutrients. However, nitrogen (N) contributed to the soil from N-fixing trees can also facilitate the growth of competitive...