Treesearch

Concentrations of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) in surface waters have rapidly increased across Europe and North America over the past few decades. The causes for such trends have yet to be fully understood, although several factors including elevated temperatures and decreased atmospheric deposition of acid, nitrogen and sulfur, are considered responsible for the release of carbon from soils into streams. In order to determine how seasonal temperature patterns and soil physical and chemical characteristics influence iron (Fe)(III) reduction and DOC release to pore-water in subalpine...

The Rocky Mountain Research Station works with National Forest planning teams to understand and maximize an important resource: forest data collected by the Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program. The program’s website, found at https://www.fia.fs.fed. us, provides a variety of tools that allow users to download standard reports and create custom queries that can be used to improve the efficiency of their planning process. By integrating or putting FIA data to work, National Forest planners are able to meet the 2012 Planning Rule’s requirements for monitoring and...

Large and severe wildfires are an observable consequence of an increasingly arid American West. There is increasing consensus that human communities, land managers, and fire managers need to adapt and learn to live with wildfires. However, a myriad of human and ecological factors constrain adaptation, and existing science-based management strategies are not sufficient to address fire as both a problem and solution. To that end, we present a novel risk-science approach that aligns wildfire response decisions, mitigation opportunities, and land management objectives by consciously integrating...

Bark beetle outbreaks have altered carbon (C) dynamics in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia Engelm. ex Wats.) forests across western North America. The sensitivity of soil C to post-beetle management operations remains unknown in these forests. We quantified total C stocks in the O horizon and upper mineral soil (0–10 cm) 6–7 years after salvage logging in lodgepole pine forests of northern Colorado and compared biomass retention or removal residue management to uncut beetle-infested forests. We evaluated the quantity and chemical composition of C in physical fractions of the O...

Site preparation is used to favor seedling regeneration and establishment by enhancing growing conditions and increasing resource availability, yet few studies have compared different site preparation techniques on growth and yield of trees over multiple decades. We destructively sampled 34-year old trees of western white pine (Pinus monticola Douglas ex D. Don) and Interior Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco var. glauca (Beissn.) Franco planted at two sites using a replicated experiment to test the e ectiveness of different site preparation treatments: (1) no site preparatio...

Forest management is trending toward creating multi-aged forest structures and diverse vegetative compositions. The challenge is successfully designing and implementing treatments that create these diverse forests. Regeneration establishment is the most important step when applying a silvicultural system because it determines future treatments and optimizes management options. This study provided the minimum canopy openings that favor the establishment of shade-tolerant and shade-intolerant tree species to inform the implementation of uneven-aged management.

The first few years of the 21st century brought a series of unprecedented natural disturbances to the southwestern U.S. A severe drought, later tagged as a “global change type drought,” triggered the mortality of 1,000 of native trees. For some species, such as the ponderosa pine, the drought was especially lethal due to high tree densities which were the outcome, in part, of the impacts of past management practices. Already crowded, and competing for water, the drought further weakened the pine trees, making them more susceptible to mortality due to several species of bark beetles that...

Increasingly, scholars have sought to understand the role of collective action across property boundaries to address natural resource management challenges. Although the growing focus on collective action for natural resource management has led to many new and potentially useful insights for governance and outreach, we suggest that researchers and practitioners may benefit from taking a step back to think about the degree and type of collective action that is needed for each particular social-ecological context. We use the examples of invasive species management, fire management, and...

Forest insect outbreaks have caused and will continue to cause extensive tree mortality worldwide, affecting ecosystem services provided by forests. Remote sensing is an effective tool for detecting and mapping tree mortality caused by forest insect outbreaks. In this study, we map insect-caused tree mortality across three coniferous forests in the Western United States for the years 1984 to 2018. First, we mapped mortality at the tree level using field observations and high-resolution multispectral imagery collected in 2010, 2011, and 2018. Using these high-resolution maps of tree...

Evacuation is the preferred method in the U.S. for preserving public safety in wildfire. However, alternatives such as staying and defending are used both in North America and Australia. Dangerous delays in the decision to evacuate are also common. One contributor to the evacuation decision is attachment to the home, however, little research has examined its role in evacuation decisions. We explored the role of home attachment in the evacuation decision and the effectiveness of communication and other cues in motivating safer, more decisive response actions. Using an online sample (n =...