Treesearch

Context: The forests of Borneo have among the highest biodiversity and also the highest forest loss rates on the planet. Objectives: Our objectives were to: (1) compare multiple modelling approaches, (2) evaluate the utility of landscape composition and configuration as predictors, (3) assess the influence of the ratio of forest loss and persistence points in the training sample, (4) identify the multiple-scale drivers of recent forest loss and (5) predict future forest loss risk across Borneo. Methods We compared random forest machine learning and logistic regression in a multi-scale...

The Nearctic northern goshawk (Accipiter gentilis atricapillis) is a resident of conifer, broadleaf, and mixed forests from the boreal to the southwestern montane regions of North America. We report on a 20-year mark-recapture investigation (1991-2010) of the distribution and density of breeders, temporal and spatial variability in breeding, nestling sex ratios, local versus immigrant recruitment of breeders, breeding age structure, age-specific survival rates, and rate of population change (λ) of this species on the Kaibab Plateau, a forested sky island in northern Arizona, USA. We used...

Trees have been around for more than 370 million years, and today there are about 80 thousand species of them, occupying 3.5 billion hectares worldwide, including 250 million ha of commercial plantations. While forests can provide tremendous environmental, social, and economic benefits to nations, they also affect the hydrologic cycle in different ways. As the demand for water grows and local precipitation patterns change due to global warming, plantation forestry has encountered an increasing number of water-related conflicts worldwide. This document provides a country-by-country summary...

This chapter outlines a brief history of the United States native forests and forest plantations. It describes the past and current natural and plantation forest distribution (map, area, main species), as well as main products produced (timber, pulp, furniture, etc.). Integrated into this discussion is a characterization of the water resources of the United States and the importance of forests for water uses. The chapter presents a review of the most extensive body of research on the relationships of water and forests that has been produced world-wide. Finally, the chapter concludes with a...

White pine blister rust has been spreading through western forests since 1910, causing widespread mortality in a group that includes some of the oldest and highest-elevation pines in the United States. The disease has recently reached Colorado and is expected to travel through the southern Rockies. Although it cannot be contained, RMRS researchers and collaborators are developing proactive strategies that integrate conservation, ecology, and genetics to prepare ecosystems for invasion of the pathogen.Genetic resistance occurs in a small percentage of individuals in each of the five-needle...

National Forest System lands in the Blue Mountains region support a diversity of important native aquatic species that will be affected by climate change. As part of the Blue Mountains Adaptation Partnership, four of these species (spring Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha Walbaum in Artedi), bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus Suckley), summer steelhead (O. mykiss Walbaum), and interior redband trout (O. m. gibbsi Suckley) were selected for climate vulnerability analysis because of their important role in land management planning (e.g., grazing, timber harvest, Endangered Species Act...

A GIS-based approach was used to depict how threats to wilderness character vary in extent and magnitude across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. Based on the interagency strategy to monitor wilderness character, Keeping It Wild: An Interagency Strategy for Monitoring Wilderness Character Across the National Wilderness Preservation System (Landres et al. 2008a), 53 locally relevant measures were identified by the project core team to capture impacts to the five qualities of wilderness character. These measures were depicted using a variety of spatial datasets, which were normalized...

Across the western United States, the three primary drivers of tree mortality and carbon balance are bark beetles, timber harvest, and wildfire. While these agents of forest change frequently overlap, uncertainty remains regarding their interactions and influence on specific subsequent fire effects such as change in canopy cover. Acquisition of pre- and post-fire Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data on the 2012 Pole Creek Fire in central Oregon provided an opportunity to isolate and quantify fire effects coincident with specific agents of change. This study characterizes the influence...

Measuring post-fire effects at landscape scales is critical to an ecological understanding of wildfire effects. Predominantly this is accomplished with either multi-spectral remote sensing data or through ground-based field sampling plots.While these methods are important, field data is usually limited to opportunistic post-fire observations, and spectral data often lacks validation with specific variables of change. Additional uncertainty remains regarding how best to account for environmental variables influencing fire effects (e.g., weather) for which observational data cannot easily be...

The ability to rapidly estimate wind speed beneath a forest canopy or near the ground surface in any vegetation is critical to practical wildland fire behavior models. The common metric of this wind speed is the "mid-flame" wind speed, UMF. However, the existing approach for estimating UMF has some significant shortcomings. These include the assumptions that both the within-canopy wind speed and the canopy structure are uniform with depth (z) throughout the canopy and that the canopy roughness length (z0) and displacement height (d) are the same regardless of canopy structure and foliage...