Treesearch

Aircraft play vital roles in managing wildfire, but their use is both costly and inherently risky. On average, USDA Forest Service aviation costs represent 30 percent of annual firefighting expenditures. And despite improvements in airworthiness and safety in the last decade, aviation-related accidents represented the highest category of federal firefighter fatalities. To improve strategic risk management of firefighting aircraft, Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) ecologist Crystal Stonesifer and colleagues have recently developed and published a decision support system called the...

Wildfire size is increasing and so is the erosion potential, especially within intensified fire environments. Fires such as the record-breaking Colorado Cameron Peak Fire in 2020 are so large, and burn so hot, there is very little, if any vegetation left behind. The soil is left vulnerable and exposed to weather events. Extreme flooding events followed Cameron with a vengeance, causing destruction to natural and manmade features in the Poudre River Corridor, just west of Fort Collins, CO. Erosion increases sediment and wildfire ash in waterways and can cause hazards to people, property,...

Scientists are seeing an increase in cases where forest resilience is pushed beyond a breaking point. Within the last few decades, wildfires in the western United States have increasingly burned so severely that some forests are unlikely to return to their prefire state and may convert to different forest types or even to nonforested systems like grassland or shrubland.

For most of the 20th century, a primary objective of forest operations on federal public lands was supplying green timber to the forest products industry for manufacturing lumber and other forest products. Harvest operations and supply chain logistics were designed to handle this green timber with methods that maximized both efficiency and productivity with an eye on revenues.

Plant control methods have been developed to reduce weed species that are often problematic in agricultural systems. However, these methods can create new challenges, such as herbicide resistance. Determining which plant traits are associated with herbicide resistance can assist managers in identifying species with the potential to develop herbicide resistance and to better understand factors contributing to the evolution of herbicide resistance. We used random forest models to model herbicide resistance of noxious weeds as a function of 10 biological and ecological plant characteristics....

Invasive species cause billions of dollars of economic losses and other damage every year in the United States. Environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling can help managers determine whether a problem species is present in an area, even when its numbers are low or it is hard to observe. This capability makes it a powerful tool for early detection and monitoring. The National Invasive Species Council (NISC), recognizing eDNA sampling as a promising tool for invasive species surveillance and management, began in 2020 to look for ways to make this tool more tangible for managers. Rocky Mountain...

Climate forecasts and disturbance mapping increasingly inform strategies for ecological restoration practices. Our study objectives were to understand how a postfire rehabilitation seed mix responds to fire, seeding timing, and changes in fall precipitation timing due to climate change. We planted seeds commonly used in the Great Basin Desert of North America on soil cores in a randomized block design. We imposed two experimental treatments, experimental fire (burned seedbeds or unburned seedbeds) and timing of seeding with simulated precipitation (early September vs. mid-October) in a...

The USDA Water Erosion Prediction Project (WEPP) is a process-based soil erosion prediction model. WEPP uses three soil erodibility parameters: rill erodibility (Kr), interrill erodibility (Ki), and critical hydraulic shear stress (τc). In this study, a new parameterization approach for estimating erodibility was developed for WEPP applications on rangelands. Data from overland flow experiments on disturbed and undisturbed rangelands were used to develop empirical equations to predict rill erodibility variation as a function of vegetation cover and soil texture. Data from rainfall simulatio...

The synergy between human land use and climate change is accelerating the global decline of biodiversity. In the fragile Himalayas, this trend has a strong ecological impact on wildlife communities, and a better understanding is needed to discern changes in the mechanisms. This study aims to understand the effects of land use and climate change on the functional (FD) and phylogenetic diversity (PD) of mammal and bird communities across the land use gradient.

This study uses remote sensing and GIS techniques to examine the intensity and dynamics of land use/cover change and environmental indices across a four-decade period in the Chingola district of Zambia, from 1972 to 2020 using five classification stages (1972, 1992, 2001, 2013, and 2020). A total of 10 key climate change detection monitoring indices were generated using RClimDex to examine the implications of land degradation on the bioclimatic factors from 1983 to 2020. The findings revealed a significant expansion in Built-ups (7.3%/year), farmlands (3.18%/year), and mining areas...