Treesearch

Mastication is a silvicultural technique that grinds, shreds, or chops trees or shrubs into pieces and redistributes the biomass onto the forest floor to form a layer of woody debris. Unlike other fuel treatments that remove this biomass, masticated biomass often remains on site, which increases total fuel loading and causes concern over how the masticated particles may burn if exposed to prescribed fire or wildfire. Central to the question of how these particles may burn is how the time since mastication affects the decomposition of the wood particles comprising the fuels. We conducted...

Periods of disuse or physical inactivity increases bone porosity and decreases bone mineral density, resulting in a loss of bone mechanical competence in many animals. Although large hibernators like bears and marmots prevent bone loss during hibernation, despite long periods of physical inactivity, some small hibernators do lose bone during hibernation. Little pocket mice (Perognathus longimembris) remain underground during winter hibernation and undergo bouts of torpor and interbout arousals, but the torpor bout duration is shorter than other rodent hibernators. Additionally, little...

Forage kochia (Bassia prostrata, hereafter ‘kochia’), a short-statured shrub of Eurasian origin, has been widely seeded in the Intermountain West for rangeland revegetation, post-fire rehabilitation and greenstripping. Although popular for revegetation purposes, it can be become troublesome in areas managed for biodiversity conservation. In southwestern Idaho, kochia is considered invasive in slickspot communities where it competes with sensitive endemic peppergrass species Lepidium papilliferum and L. davisii (Kinter et al. 2012, BLM 2014).

The Science Framework is intended to link the Department of the Interior’s Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy with long-term strategic conservation actions in the sagebrush biome. The Science Framework provides a multiscale approach for prioritizing areas for management and determining effective management strategies within the sagebrush biome. The emphasis is on sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems and Greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus). The approach provided in the Science Framework links sagebrush ecosystem resilience to disturbance and resistance to nonnative,...

The primary theme of this study is the cost-effectiveness of fuel treatments at multiple scales of investment. We focused on the nexus of fuel management and suppression response planning, designing spatial fuel treatment strategies to incorporate landscape features that provide control opportunities that are relevant to fire operations. Our analysis explored the frequency and magnitude of fire-treatment encounters, which are critical determinants of treatment efficacy. Additionally, we examined avoided area burned, avoided suppression costs, and avoided damages, and combined all three...

Wildfires can increase the frequency and magnitude of catastrophic debris flows. Integrated, proactive naturalhazard assessment would therefore characterize landscapes based on the potential for the occurrence and interactions of wildfires and postwildfire debris flows. This chapter presents a new modeling effort that can quantify the variability surrounding a key input to postwildfire debris‐flow modeling, the amount of watershed burned at moderate to high severity, in a prewildfire context. The use of stochastic wildfire simulation captures variability surrounding the timing and location...

Hydraulic geometry offers robust scaling of channels across many orders of magnitude in natural rivers, irrigation canals, and laboratory channels (Ferguson 1986). Although the authors’ analysis focuses on fluvial deposits, it is worth noting that hydraulic geometry relations can be developed for a variety of fluids, which may have relevance for some Martian channels given that differences in gravity and atmospheric conditions (pressure, temperature, and, thus, viscosity) may cause channel hydraulics and flow rheology (Froude and Reynolds numbers) to differ from those on Earth. Data from...

Utah lotus (Lotus utahensis Ottley) is a North American leguminous forb that may hold promise for rangeland revegetation in the western United States for diversifying planting mixtures, attracting pollinators, providing high-quality forage, and expanding habitats for insects needed by sage-grouse chicks. Fourteen wildland seed collections of Utah lotus originating from Nevada and Utah were assessed for genetic variation of a wide range of phenotypic traits and genetic relationships. Population structure estimates defined by 552 amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) markers identifie...

Wildfires, harvesting, and beetle outbreaks all have different effects on forest dynamics and biogeochemical responses. Responses to beetle outbreaks vary with forest species composition, understory conditions, tree size and age, and other factors. Larger trees are more susceptible to mountain pine beetle attack. Mixed-age stands at the Fraser Experimental Forest had lower overall tree mortality and greater recovery potential. These findings provide support for maintaining age, species, and structural diversity within headwater forests.

Forest management that creates a diversity of prey habitats in ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forests is beneficial to gos-hawks. The desired habitat diversity includes all tree age classes with a focus on older trees in fine-scale mosaics composed of groups of trees, scattered individual trees, large snags and logs and small openings with species-diverse and productive herbaceous-shrub communities.