Treesearch

Wildfires are natural disturbances in the western United States. Managing the resulting stands of dead and dying trees requires balancing conflicting priorities. Although these trees provide wildlife habitat and salvage logging revenue, they also pose public safety hazards.

The western United States is home to many woodpecker species that are strongly associated with recently disturbed forests, including post wildfire and post-beetle outbreaks. These types of landscapes are favored habitat because the dead and dying trees provide nesting and foraging substrates. When managing these landscapes, managers must balance providing habitat for woodpeckers considered species of conservation concern with conducting salvage logging sales that generate economic revenue for the surrounding communities. Until recently, managers couldn't be certain where suitable woodpecker...

Winter recreation is a popular outdoor activity that is expected to increase in intensity due to new recreation technology and human population growth in the United States. RMRS researchers and partners studied impacts of dispersed (skiing and snowmobiling) and developed (ski areas) winter recreation on Canada lynx in Colorado. They used data from GPS devices carried by recreators to record their tracks and GPS collars to monitor movements of adult lynx to see how they overlapped. They didn’t find any consistent evidence that lynx avoided areas of low to moderate dispersed recreation. Lynx...

The two-part Science Framework for Conservation and Restoration of the Sagebrush Biome published by the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station is a new, multiscale approach to management of sagebrush ecosystems. The product of an extensive collaboration between State and Federal agencies and universities, it employs science on ecological resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive species (like cheatgrass), along with Greater sage-grouse habitat requirements, to improve conservation planning and help prioritize management actions. Prioritized areas and management...

Ecological stoichiometry affects the processes and functions of ecosystems, but the similarities and differences of stoichiometric characteristics among diverse agropastoral ecosystems under the same climatic conditions remain unclear. In this study, plant and soil stoichiometric characteristics of different agroecosystems, namely natural grassland (free-grazing and mowed grassland), artificial grassland (oat, Chinese leymus and corn silage), field crops (naked oats, flax and wheat) and commercial crops (cabbage and potatoes), were investigated in Guyuan County, China. Results showed total...

Soil erosion is a serious phenomenon which can be accelerated beyond sustainable levels by anthropogenic activities such as military training. Soil erosion modeling can be utilized in an effort to identify accelerated erosion and concomitant sedimentation before they reach unsustainable levels. Regrettably, most models are deficient in the way they account for topographic heterogeneity. While occasionally producing reasonable estimates of total soil erosion and sediment production from within a watershed, they provide no information regarding sources and sinks of eroded sediments within...

Wildland firefighters work in complex and dynamic environments, with many dangers that pose serious threats to their safety. Falling snags and rocks, steep and rugged terrain, and rapid increases in fire behavior are just some of the dangers that affect wildland firefighters. Because of the many possible ways that firefighters have been or could be injured, various safety protocols have been developed in the United States to help mitigate the hazards, including the standard firefighting orders (McArdle 1957) and LCES (lookouts, communications, escape routes, and safety zones) (Gleason...

Previous attempts to identify the environmental factors associated with firefighter entrapments in the United States have suggested that there are several common denominators. Despite the widespread acceptance of the assumed commonalities, few studies have quantified how often entrapments actually meet these criteria. An analysis of the environmental conditions at the times and locations of 166 firefighter entrapments involving 1202 people and 117 fatalities that occurred between 1981 and 2017 in the conterminous United States revealed some surprising results. Contrary to general assumption...

Nine multipurpose silvicultural treatments, formulated as a synthesis of recently implemented prescriptions offered by forest managers, were simulated to evaluate their effectiveness at enhancing fire resistance. The Forest Vegetation Simulator was applied, within the BioSum Framework, on over 3,000 Forest Inventory and Analysis plots representing 5 million hectares of dry mixed conifer forests in eastern Washington and Oregon and California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. We developed a composite fire-resistance score based on four fuel modification principals and metrics: fuel strata gap,...

Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) is a federally threatened species in the contiguous United States. Within National Forests covered by the Northern Rockies Lynx Management Direction, Federal land managers must consider the effect of management activities on Canada lynx habitat. A common method to assess Canada lynx habitat used by the U.S. Forest Service is to measure horizontal cover using a cover board. We used field measurements and airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) metrics to test beta regression models that predict estimates of horizontal cover on the Nez Perce-Clearwater...