Treesearch

Annual agoseris grows from British Columbia to Baja California and in all US states west of western Montana and western New Mexico except for Wyoming and Colorado (Baird 2006; Jensen 2007). Variety heterophylla is found throughout the range described for the species (Fig. 1; Baird 2004, 2006). Variety cryptopleura occurs in the foothills and Coast Mountain ranges surrounding California’s Great Central Valley. Variety quentinii grows in Arizona and New Mexico (Baird 2006).

Shaggy fleabane occurs from southern British Columbia south through the Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon to central and eastern California and west to North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas (Nesom 2006; Hitchcock and Cronquist 2018; USDA NRCS 2021). According to PLANTS (USDA NRCS 2021), shaggy fleabane also occurs in Manitoba and a handful of counties in Arizona and New Mexico. Shaggy fleabane appeared in 29 of 50 local floras from throughout the Basin and Range and Colorado Plateau physiographic provinces (McLaughlin 1986).

International demand for wood and other forest products continues to grow rapidly, and uncertainties remain about how animal communities will respond to intensifying resource extraction associated with woody bioenergy production. We examined changes in alpha and beta diversity of bats, bees, birds, and reptiles across wood production landscapes in the southeastern United States, a biodiversity hotspot that is one of the principal sources of woody biomass globally. We sampled across a spatial gradient of paired forest landuses (representing pre and postharvest) that allowed us to evaluate...

Climate change and fire suppression have altered disturbance regimes in forest ecosystems globally. In the seasonally dry forests of western North America, large-scale restoration may reduce severe fire and increase forest resilience but also eliminate existing habitat for sensitive wildlife species. We modeled bioregional-scale effects of forest restoration on future severe fire activity and occupancy dynamics of an old-forest species declining in abundance, the spotted owl (Strix occidentalis), in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Our findings suggest restoring historical forest...

Coarse woody debris (CWD) is a significant component of the forest biomass pool; hence a model is warranted to predict CWD decomposition and its role in forest carbon (C) and nutrient cycling under varying management and climatic conditions. A process-based model, CWDDAT (Coarse Woody Debris Decomposition Assessment Tool) was calibrated and validated using data from the FACE (Free Air Carbon Dioxide Enrichment) Wood Decomposition Experiment utilizing pine (Pinus taeda), aspen (Populous tremuloides) and birch (Betula papyrifera) on nine Experimental Forests (EF) covering a range of climate,...

An assumption of correlative landscape genetic methods is that genetic differentiation at neutral markers arises solely from the degree to which the intervening landscape between individuals or populations resists gene flow. However, this assumption is violated when gene flow occurs into the sampled population from an unsampled, differentiated deme. This may happen when sampling within only a portion of a population's extent or when closely related species hybridize with the sampled population. In both cases, violation of the modelling assumptions has the potential to reduce landscape...

Understanding ownership effects on large wildfires is a precursor to the development of risk governance strategies that better protect people and property and restore fire-adapted ecosystems. We analyzed wildfire events in the Pacific Northwest from 1984 to 2018 to explore how area burned responded to ownership, asking whether particular ownerships burned disproportionately more or less, and whether these patterns varied by forest and grass/shrub vegetation types. While many individual fires showed indifference to property lines, taken as a whole, we found patterns of disproportionate...

Weather plays an integral role in fire management due to the direct and indirect effects it has on fire behavior. However, fire managers may not use all information available to them during the decision-making process, instead utilizing mental shortcuts that can bias decision-making. Thus, it is important to evaluate if (and how) fire managers use information like weather forecasts when making tactical decisions. We explore USDA Forest Service fire manager confidence in relative humidity, precipitation, and wind models. We then use a choice experiment where key weather attributes were...

Biological soil crusts (BSCs), or biocrusts, are composed of fungi, bacteria, algae, and bryophytes (mosses, etc.) that occupy bare soil, entwining soil particles with filaments or rootlike structures and/or gluing them together with polysaccharide exudates to form a consolidated surface crust that stabilizes the soil against erosion. BSCs are common in arid and semiarid regions where vascular plant cover is naturally sparse, maximizing the exposure of surface-dwelling organisms to direct sunlight. Although less prominent and less studied there, BSC organisms are also present in more mesic...

Despite the need for preserving the carbon pools in fire-prone southern European landscapes, emission reductions from wildfire risk mitigation are still poorly understood. In this study, we estimated expected carbon emissions and carbon credits from fuel management projects ongoing in Catalonia (Spain). The planning areas encompass about 1000 km2 and represent diverse fire regimes and Mediterranean forest ecosystems. We first modeled the burn probability assuming extreme weather conditions and historical fire ignition patterns. Stand-level wildfire exposure was then coupled with fuel...