Treesearch

Current trajectories of global climate change call for a dramatic rethinking of the ways in which human communities navigate their relationships with each other and the natural world. In lieu of global mitigation efforts, communities, governments and other resource managers around the world are consequently being forced to adapt their livelihoods, values and practices to a rapidly changing climate. As scholars increasingly recognise, responding to the impact of dramatic changes across scales, landscapes and communities requires substantial collaboration, and many have identified ‘place’ as...

Biological soil crusts (BSCs) are created where a diverse array of microorganisms colonize the surface and upper few millimeters of the soil and create a consolidated crust. They were originally described from arid ecosystems where vascular vegetation is naturally sparse or absent. They have since been discovered in all terrestrial ecosystems. Where present, they perform a variety of important ecological functions, including the capture and accumulation of water and essential plant nutrients, and their release in forms useful to vascular plants. They also stabilize the soil surface against...

A tylenchid nematode parasite of a male long-legged fly, Tachytrechus sanus Osten Sacken (Diptera: Dolichopodidae) from Montana, USA is described as Parasitylenchus myiophagus n. sp. (Nematoda: Parasitylenchidae). The new species is characterized by the presence of an extremely long first generation female and numerous short and wide second generation males and females produced in “enclosed” clusters in the host’s body cavity. Both generation female nematodes are ovoviviparous, with short stylets lacking knobs and simple tails lacking spikes, palps or mucrons. The second generation males...

This chapter reviews and synthesizes research on factors associated with stream water quality at the Priest River Experimental Forest (PREF). In particular, it is intended to inform regional water quality regulatory agencies, such as Idaho Department of Environmental Quality (IDEQ) and Idaho Department of Lands (IDL) on PREF’s available resources and its potential usefulness for conducting synthetic and field research designed to increase science-based knowledge on factors associated with stream water quality.

Trying to monitor changes in the size of a bear population and frustrated with the small sample size due to budget constraints? Have you considered that many species provide easy-to-obtain samples by rubbing on all sorts of things and leaving hair throughout their range? Surveys conducted annually in Glacier NP, USA, 1983-1997 to investigate the use of passive bear sign deposition to monitor bear population trend revealed the high prevalence and wide geographic extent of bear rubbing and resulting hair deposition (K. Kendall, unpublished data). Further, bears like to use trails and roads,...

Wildfire management in the US relies on a complex nationwide network of shared resources that are allocated based on regional need. While this network bolsters firefighting capacity, it may also provide pathways for transmission of infectious diseases between fire sites. In this manuscript, we review a first attempt at building an epidemiological model adapted to the interconnected fire system, with the aims of supporting prevention and mitigation efforts along with understanding potential impacts to workforce capacity. Specifically, we developed an agent-based model of COVID-19 built on...

The wildfire management community has made great strides incorporating new decision support tools into how it plans for and responds to wildfire incidents. Despite improvements in risk assessment and management at the incident scale, increasing fire activity and critical resource shortages reveal a system under strain in need of strategies that more efficiently allocate scarce resources across incidents while promoting the well-being of the firefighting workforce upon which the system relies. A scaled-up infusion of data-driven analysis and decision-making could enhance the performance of...

Forest management guidelines are designed to protect water quality from unintended effects of land use changes such as timber harvest, mining, or forest road construction. Although streams that periodically cease to flow (nonperennial) drain the majority of forested areas, these streams are not consistently included in forest management guidelines. This paper reviews management guidelines for nonperennial (intermittent and ephemeral) streams draining temperate forests in the continental U.S., evaluates potential impacts of land use activities on ecosystem services provided by these...

This chapter is a review and synthesis of research conducted at Glacier Lakes Ecosystem Experiments Site (GLEES) on stream nutrients and biological responses. It is intended to inform national and regional water quality regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (WDEQ), about existing results of relevant scientific studies that are available at GLEES, and to identify future field and synthetic research of potential use to regulatory agencies that might be conducted at GLEES.

* Rangeland-based livestock raising is the only agricultural production system that maintains native plant communities, providing ecosystem services in the same space as food and fiber production. * Annual aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) underlies forage production and multiple ecosystem services. ANPP is highly variable in rangelands in the western United States, across the landscape, from year to year, and within a growing season. Variability is also increasing as the climate changes. * Grazing management decisions that determine when, where, and how much of ANPP is consumed...