Treesearch

Global biodiversity targets focus on landscape and seascape connectivity as a foundational component of biodiversity conservation, including networks of connected protected areas. Recent advances allow the measurement and prediction of organismal movements at multiple scales. We provide a definition of connectivity that links movement to persistence and ecological function. Connectivity science can guide planning for biodiversity, ecosystem services, ecological restoration, and climate adaptation. Ongoing climate change and land and sea use are closing the window of opportunity for...

Context: Consistent with the diversity-stability hypothesis, high wildlife diversity has been associated with increased resilience and stability of ecosystem services and functions. Nevertheless, ecological non-stationarity associated with climate change challenges the concept of stability. Furthermore, ambiguity surrounding appropriate diversity metrics to usehas hindered the ability of natural resource managers to leverage the potential benefits of biodiversity conservation.Objectives and methods: We aimed to infer how diversity and compositional stability might be affected by multiple...

Whitebark pine, a geographically widespread upper subalpine tree species, exists largely within federally designated Wilderness areas (herein, wilderness) that are afforded greater protection from direct human manipulation as compared to surrounding public and privately owned lands. Nevertheless, climate change, associated disturbances, historical fire suppression, disease, and other factors are causing an increase in tree mortality of this federally threatened foundation species in parts of its range. The 1964 Wilderness Act mandates that wilderness areas are preserved in their “natural”...

Rapidly maturing frameworks for investing in and committing to mitigation of climate change through forest management have focused almost exclusively on the benefits of carbon sequestration, without accounting for collateral changes in geophysical factors such as surface albedo. Newly available 30m albedo retrievals derived from imagery acquired by the Landsat 8 satellite, analysed at 273,652 field plots monitored by the United States Forest Service, suggests that large areas of the U.S. Inter-Mountain West’s forests have a net warming impact on the planet’s surface energy balance. For the...

Santa Ana winds are dry offshore downslope windstorms, commonly observed during autumn and winter across southwestern California in the United States. The accuracy of real-time Santa Ana wind forecasts is crucial for wildfire- related emergency management and decision-making. This research utilizes the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s diagnostic wind flow model WindNinja (WN) and evaluates 1) the accuracy of 10-m sustained wind speed from an operational coarse resolution mesoscale forecast model and 2) the relative accuracy of high spatial resolution WN downscaled simulations...

Reforestation is generally regarded as having the most substantial climate mitigation potential among a suite of available natural climate solutions which have focused almost exclusively on the benefits of carbon sequestration and storage. However, these reforestation studies have not accounted for the adverse warming impacts resulting from corresponding surface albedo change. A newly available dataset developed with albedo imagery from the Landsat 8 satellite analyzed at field plots from the United States (US) Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides non-soil carbon stocks and...

Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Wildfire Risk Management Science Team develops tools for wildland fire managers. Our cutting-edge technology, backed by state-of-the-art science informs decisions made by fire managers every day. For two decades, the Wildfire Risk Management Science Team has been investigating critical facets of the wildfire response system and creating decision-making support tools for fire planners and incident command teams. Our Team provides real-time data on risk management, fire response strategy, and likely effectiveness to the people who need it most - managers...

Genetic rescue, specifically translocation to facilitate gene flow among populations and reduce the effects of inbreeding, is an increasingly used approach in conservation. However, this approach comes with trade-offs, wherein gene flow may reduce fitness when populations have adaptive differentiation (i.e., outbreeding depression). A better understanding of the interaction between isolation, inbreeding, and adaptive divergence in key traits, such as life history traits, will help to inform genetic rescue efforts. Stream-dwelling salmonids, such as the westslope cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchu...

1. Climate change is expected to induce shifts in the composition, structure and functioning of Arctic tundra ecosystems. Increases in the frequency and severity of tundra fires have the potential to catalyse vegetation transitions with far-reaching local, regional and global consequences. 2. We propose that post-fire tundra recovery, coupled with climate change, may not necessarily lead to pre-fire conditions. Our hypothesis, based on surveys and literature, suggests two climate–fire driven trajectories. One trajectory results in increased woody vegetation under low fire frequency; the...

The process of fairly allocating limited recreation opportunities across, and within, a broad range of user groups presents a challenging task to recreation managers, planners, and policy makers. The practice of recreation allocation can be controversial. Recreationists share deep values toward access to high-quality recreation opportunities, and recreationists tend to examine decisions of recreation allocation with a serious level of scrutiny when a use limit is implemented. Despite the controversy that recreation allocation decisions can generate, research-based guidance to inform...