Treesearch

Timber harvesting operations generate brush and other vegetative debris, which often has no marketable value. In many western U.S. forests, these materials represent a fire hazard and a potential threat to forest health and must be removed or burned for disposal. Currently, there is no established, consistent method to estimate brush disposal production rates in the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Region, which spans Montana and parts of Washington, Idaho, South Dakota, and North Dakota. Production rates developed specifically for one Northern Region national forest over a decade ago are...

Conservation of imperiled species often demands addressing a complex suite of threats that undermine species viability. Regulatory approaches, such as the US Endangered Species Act (1973), tend to focus on anthropogenic threats through adoption of policies and regulatory mechanisms. However, persistent ecosystem-based threats, such as invasive species and altered disturbance regimes, remain critical issues for most at-risk species considered to be conservation-reliant. We describe an approach for addressing persistent ecosystem threats to at-risk species based on ecological resilience and...

Sagebrush steppe ecosystems in the United States currently (2016) occur on only about one-half of their historical land area because of changes in land use, urban growth, and degradation of land, including invasions of non-native plants. The existence of many animal species depends on the existence of sagebrush steppe habitat. The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) depends on large landscapes of intact habitat of sagebrush and perennial grasses for their existence. In addition, other sagebrush obligate animals have similar requirements and restoration of landscapes for greater...

Residents in the wildland-urban interface can play an important role in reducing wildfires’ negative effects by performing wildfire risk mitigation on their properties. This report offers insight into the wildfire risk mitigation activities and related considerations such as attitudes, experiences, and concern about wildfire, for residents of the Telluride Fire Protection District of San Miguel County, Colorado. Data come from a social survey and parcel-level rapid wildfire risk assessments administered by the West Region Wildfire Council. Results are presented both in graphical form and...

Biological soil crusts are a complex of microscopic organisms growing on the soil surface in many arid and semi-arid ecosystems. These crusts perform the important role of stabilizing soil and reducing or eliminating water and wind erosion. One of the largest threats to biological soil crusts in the arid and semi-arid areas of the western United States is mechanical disturbance from vehicle traffic and grazing. The spread of the annual invasive cheatgrass has increased the fuel load in areas that previously would not carry a fire, posing a potentially widespread and new threat to this...

Elk Cervus canadensis nelsoni in the Black Hills, South Dakota, have been declining since 2006 and there is concern by resource managers and hunters that puma Puma concolor predation may be contributing to declining herds. We evaluated characteristics at sites where puma successfully killed elk in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We evaluated characteristics at coarse (79-ha plots) and fine (0.2-ha plot) scales across the landscape. Our primary objective was to obtain a better understanding of vegetation and terrain characteristics that may have facilitated greater susceptibility of elk to...

Creating a safe workplace for wildland firefighters has long been at the centre of discussion for researchers and practitioners. The goal of wildland fire safety research has been to protect operational firefighters, yet its contributions often fall short of potential because much is getting lost in the translation of peer-reviewed results to potential and intended users. When information that could enhance safety is not adopted by individuals, the potential to improve safety - to decipher the wildland fire physical or social environment and to recognise hazards - is lost. We use firefighte...

Bark beetles are among the most devastating biotic agents affecting forests globally and several species are expected to be favored by climate change. Given the potential interactions of insect outbreaks with other biotic and abiotic disturbances, and the potentially strong impact of changing disturbance regimes on forest resources, investigating climatic drivers of destructive bark beetle outbreaks is of paramount importance. We analyzed 17 time-series of the amount of wood damaged by Ips typographus, the most destructive pest of Norway spruce forests, collected across 8 European countries...

Recent population declines to the high elevation western North America foundation species whitebark pine, have been driven by the synergistic effects of the invasive blister rust pathogen, mountain pine beetle (MPB), fire exclusion, and climate change. This has led to consideration for listing whitebark pine (WBP) as a threatened or endangered species under the Endangered Species Act, which has intensified interest in developing management strategies for maintaining and restoring the species. An important, but poorly studied, aspect of WBP restoration is the spatial variation in adaptive...

The western United States faces significant forest management challenges after severe bark beetle infestations have led to substantial mortality. Minimizing costs is vital for increasing the feasibility of management operations in affected forests. Multi‐transmitter Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)‐radio frequencies (RF) technology has applications in the quantification and analysis of harvest system production efficiency and provision of real‐time operational machine position, navigation, and timing. The aim of this study was to determine the accuracy with which multi‐transmitter...