Treesearch

We often turn to nature to get away from the clamor of urban life. Doing so has been shown to lower our stress levels, reduce blood pressure, and help us sleep better. But seeking nature to improve our health may have a paradoxical effect on the denizens of these areas. The sounds we create and carry into the natural soundscape, from our conversations to the whir of mountain bike wheels or the roar of off-highway vehicles (OHVs), can be stressful to wildlife. The next time you walk with friends or family on a trail in a local park, the mountains, the woods, or a wilderness area, take...

In water-limited dryland ecosystems of the Western United States, climate change is intensifying the impacts of heat, drought, and wildfire. Disturbances often lead to increased abundance of invasive species, in part, because dryland restoration and rehabilitation are inhibited by limited moisture and infrequent plant recruitment events. Information on ecological resilience to disturbance (recovery potential) and resistance to invasive species can aid in addressing these challenges by informing long-term restoration and conservation planning. Here, we quantified the impacts of projected...

Co-production, or integrating a range of perspectives from researchers and non-researchers into the knowledge development process, is considered valuable for increasing the potential that scientific results will be applied by practitioners. While the literature around co-production often touts the benefits of such work, there is less focus on the potential costs of co-production, and discussions often lack nuance about the specific meaning of co-production in a particular context. In this perspective essay, we use an example co-production process focused on the development of a science...

The scale of wildfires, in terms of acreage burned and mortality rates, is on the rise due to climate change. There are various causes for wildfire ignition; however, power lines are one of the most significant factors, leading to some of the most devastating wildfire events over the past decade and even bankrupting electric utilities. Traditional insurance strategies are often not applicable for providing financial resilience to electric utilities against such catastrophic events. This paper quantifies the associated risk and proposes a catastrophe bond (CAT bond) as a form of parametric...

Rapid increases in wildfire area burned across North American forests pose novel challenges for managers and society. Increasing area burned raises questions about whether, and to what degree, contemporary fire regimes (1984-2022) are still departed from historical fire regimes (pre-1880). We use the North American tree-ring fire-scar network (NAFSN), a multi-century record comprising >1800 fire-scar sites spanning diverse forest types, and contemporary fire perimeters to ask whether there is a contemporary fire surplus or fire deficit, and whether recent fire years are unprecedented...

Society’s most vulnerable communities bear the burdens of a multitude of environmental shocks and stressors, which are increasingly likely to occur simultaneously or in quick succession. However, our understanding of where environmental risks accumulate across the United States and how determinants of multi-hazard risk vary within the country remains incomplete. This study offers a more comprehensive understanding of the national scope and underlying drivers of compounding environmental risks from five hazards (water shortage, air pollution, wildfire, flooding, and impaired water quality)...

In many parts of the western United States, wildfires are becoming larger and more severe, threatening the persistence of forest ecosystems. Understanding the ways in which management activities such as prescribed fire and managed wildfire can mitigate fire severity is essential for developing effective forest conservation strategies. We evaluated the effects of previous fuels reduction treatments, including prescribed fire and wildfire managed for resource benefit, and other wildfires on the burn severity of the 2022 Black Fire in southwestern New Mexico, USA. The Black Fire burned over...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service is required to monitor National Forest System (NFS) lands to assess whether management plans are maintaining or restoring ecological integrity. As part of this monitoring effort, each planning unit is required to select at least one focal species - or one focal species assemblage - that represents a specific aspect of ecological integrity or management plan effectiveness. The planning unit can then make inferences about ecological integrity by monitoring this focal species or assemblage. Although selecting a focal species may seem simple,...

Background. The increased interest in why and how trees die from fire has led to several syntheses of the potential mechanisms of fire-induced tree mortality. However, these generally neglect to consider experimental methods used to simulate fire behaviour conditions. Aims. To describe, evaluate the appropriateness of and provide a historical timeline of the different approaches that have been used to simulate fire behaviour in fire-induced tree mortality studies. Methods. We conducted a historical review of the different actual and fire proxy methods that have been used to further our...

Prescribed fires can be a significant source of air pollution with negative consequences for public health and safety. Therefore, smoke management is a key element in the planning and execution of prescribed fires. Emission factors (EF), which quantify the relative abundance of pollutants released by wildland fires, are a needed input for the emission calculations which are essential to effective smoke management. A key challenge when conducting prescribed fires near sensitive receptors such as roadways, communities, and outdoor recreational sites, is limiting smoke production from...