Treesearch

The 2017 fire season in Montana was especially severe, with more than 2,400 wildfires burning about 1.4 million acres across the state. In the aftermath, the Forest Service’s Northern Region headquarters helped assess and prioritize national forest recovery needs. The work required hundreds of hours compiling data, matching it with GIS layers and fire boundaries, and considering factors such as slope, aspect, and the presence of nearby tree species.

Diseases are threatening forests worldwide. In North America, white pine blister rust (WPBR) is one of the most damaging tree epidemics. To understand patterns in the current and future risk for high-elevation five-needle white pine species (High-5), we compiled data from independent studies across the western U.S. to estimate WPBR risk. Contrary to previous predictions, the future climate is not expected to reduce the prevalence of WPBR risk on High-5 species in the western U.S. The prevalence of WPBR is predicted to increase, with most distributions of the High-5 species projected to...

Outcomes of European colonization encompass surface fire exclusion followed by the forestation of open ecosystems and tree densification within forests, with concomitant replacement of fire-tolerant tree species, specifically oaks, by fire-sensitive tree species. In Kentucky, a 10.5 million ha area of the eastern United States, I compared tree composition between a historical assessment (1907–1909) and modern surveys (2010–2014), utilizing a divergence metric of squared-chord distance, which revealed a similar progression. Following the time since Euro-American settlement and associated...

Suitable climate for tree species currently located in Mexico may shift to the United States and Canada under future warming, resulting in the potential for tree species shifts, with new species gained in the USA and Canada and species losses in Mexico. To isolate dynamics, I modeled distributions of 184 commonly recorded wideranging or transboundary tree species of North America, including presence in Mexico, and 258 tree species primarily abundant in Mexico, including 51 endemic species, under current climate and predicted to three future climates (projected warming of 4.3–8.8 ◦ C during...

Forest ecosystems provide essential services such as timber, water regulation, biodiversity, and recreation, yet they are increasingly influenced by the interplay between climate and socioeconomic forces. This study synthesizes findings from the 2020 Resources Planning Act (RPA) Assessment to evaluate how these factors affect historical trends and future projections of U.S. forest conditions and services. Results show that total forest area is projected to decline slightly by 2070, mainly due to conversion to developed land, with the greatest losses occurring in the South. While socioeconom...

Increased wildfire activity in the US motivated the USDA Forest Service to update national wildfire simulation data used for risk assessment and prioritizing wildland fuel reduction programs. The update (FSim-2020 to FSim-2023) included revised data on fuels, ignition frequency, fire weather, and recalibration of the FSim model. We overlayed the new simulated fire perimeters with the most recent building footprint data to examine the change in magnitude and spatial patterns of estimated building exposure. We found that the update to FSim-2023 resulted in a 61% increase in simulated...

For decades, national participation in hunting has been on the decline. One population of hunters, however, is bucking the trend: Women. Studies on women in hunting often focus on barriers to participation, such as lack of leisure time, lack of experience, and lack of role models. But despite those barriers, women’s participation has been increasing. In 2022 an estimated 3 million women represented 22 percent of all hunters, more than double the number from 2016. Given this upward trend, there are still many unanswered questions about what motivates women to participate in hunting.

In the dry, fire-adapted forests of California’s Sierra Nevada - where yellow pine, mixed conifer, and red fir historically burned on frequent, low-to-moderate severity cycles - restoring historical fire regimes has been a guiding principle for ecological management. But most contemporary forests in this region are far from that benchmark. Instead, these forests have been shaped by decades of fire suppression, and increasingly, by megafires at the opposite extreme.

Climate change is contributing to unprecedented rates of ecological transformation worldwide. Shifts in species composition and habitat have implications for ecosystem function and human relationships. The 1964 Wilderness Act was passed to preserve undeveloped large landscapes in their “natural” condition and for the continued use and enjoyment of people. Nevertheless, wilderness is still vulnerable to the direct and indirect impacts of climate change. Using active management to respond to climate change challenges in wilderness is complicated by the very protections afforded to wilderness...

For 25 years, ranchers in South Dakota have used the South Dakota Drought Tool to estimate forage productivity of grazing lands. This crucial information helps them gauge whether to increase or decrease their herd size the following year. Management agencies also use the South Dakota Drought Tool to determine forage productivity of the lands they manage to balance the needs of livestock and wildlife.