Treesearch

Climate change, population growth, urbanization, and interactions thereof may alter the water supply-demand balance and lead to shifts in water shortage characteristics at different timescales. This study proposes an approach to improve the vulnerability assessments of U.S. river basins to the shortage at the interannual to decadal timescales by characterizing shifts in intensity, duration, and frequency (IDF) of water shortage events from current (1986-2015) to future (2070-2099) periods. The results indicate that under the driest future climate projection, the frequency and intensity of...

A key component in understanding plant-insect interactions is the nature of host defenses. Research on defense traits among Pinus species has focused on specialized metabolites and axial resin ducts, but the role of lignin in defense within diverse systems is unclear. We investigated lignin levels in the outer bark and phloem of P. longaeva, P. balfouriana, and P. flexilis; tree species growing at high elevations in the western United States known to differ in susceptibility to mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae; MPB). Pinus longaeva and P. balfouriana are attacked by MPB less...

The new photoload technique developed by RMRS provides a relatively inexpensive, fast, and accurate method to estimate loadings of major fuel components. This new technique allows land managers to create and use photoload sequences in any ecosystem worldwide for 1-hour, 10-hour, 100-hour, and 1,000-hour downed dead woody, shrub, and herbaceous fuels. The report provides a comprehensive protocol to create photoload sequences from field-sampled fuel beds, addresses common issues encountered in the field, and provides guidance for training field crews in the photoload sampling method.

RMRS scientists have developed an approach to estimating carbon stocks in rangelands. Above- and below-ground carbon storage in rangelands can be enhanced through vegetation management that includes deep-rooted perennial herbaceous plants, drought-tolerant herbaceous plants, and diverse native plants. Soil organic matter can be increased by increasing plant ground cover to protect soil and promote the formation of organic matter. Carbon stocks can be retained by limiting soil disturbance during management operations, limiting carbon losses due to catastrophic fires, and preventing conversio...

The pinyon jay has undergone an 80 percent decline in population in the last half-century, while the area of pinyon-juniper woodlands that they depend on has been expanding. Recent science has sought to tease apart specifically which portions of the pinyon-juniper forests are used by the jays to shed some light on possible reasons for the population declines.

A bark beetle outbreak killed 78 percent of overstory lodgepole pine on high-elevation study plots at the Fraser Experimental Forest in north-central Colorado. Of those snags, only 17 percent fell in the first decade after the peak of the outbreak.

Snow retained in tree canopies is quicker to sublimate (go directly from snow to water vapor) than snow on the ground, and ecosystem sublimation rates can be affected by factors that affect the amount of snow retained in the canopy.

WindNinja is a microscale diagnostic wind model, developed for and widely used in operational wildland fire applications both in the United States and abroad.

Three forest types account for 65.2 percent of lower treeline in the Intermountain West: Colorado Plateau pinyon-juniper woodlands, Great Basin pinyon-juniper woodlands, and Northern Rocky Mountain dry mixed-conifer forests.

Landscapes are shifting in response to climate change and wildfire. Forests of the Huachuca Mountains are projected to undergo significant shifts in biomass, species distributions, and patterns of fire over 50 years of projected future climate.