Treesearch

Wind predictions in complex terrain are important for a number of applications. Dynamic downscaling of numerical weather prediction (NWP) model winds with a high-resolution wind model is one way to obtain a wind forecast that accounts for local terrain effects, such as wind speedup over ridges, flow channeling in valleys, flow separation around terrain obstacles, and flows induced by local surface heating and cooling. In this paper we investigate the ability of a mass-consistent wind model for downscaling near-surface wind predictions from four NWP models in complex terrain. Model predictio...

Climatic conditions, particularly extreme rainfall, snowmelt, and flooding, pose substantial risks to the infrastructure on and near the National Forests and Grasslands of the Rocky Mountain Region. Essentially all infrastructure is vulnerable to some degree, but risks and vulnerability differ greatly from place to place. Useful distinctions can be made that can inform environmental assessments, land-use planning, and priorities for climate adaptation.

Healthy plant communities of the American sagebrush steppe consist of mostly wind-pollinated shrubs and grasses interspersed with a diverse mix of mostly spring-blooming, herbaceous perennial wildflowers. Native, nonsocial bees are their common floral visitors, but their floral associations and abundances are poorly known. Extrapolating from the few available pollination studies, bees are the primary pollinators needed for seed production. Bees, therefore, will underpin the success of ambitious seeding efforts to restore native forbs to impoverished sagebrush steppe communities following...

In arid environments, the propagule density of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) may limit the extent of the plant–AMF symbiosis. Inoculation of seedlings withAMF could alleviate this problem, but the success of this practice largely depends on the ability of the inoculum to multiply and colonize the growing root system after transplanting. These phenomena were investigated in Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis (Wyoming big sagebrush) seedlings inoculated with native AMF. Seedlings were first grown in a greenhouse in soil without AMF (non-inoculated seedlings) or with AMF (inoculated...

Few studies have assessed how ploidy type within a species affects genetic variation among populations in relation to source climates. Basin wildrye (Leymus cinereus (Scribn. & Merr.) A. Love) is a large bunchgrass common in the intermountain Western U.S. found in both octoploid and tetraploid types. In common gardens at two sites over two years differences in both ploidy type and genetic variation within ploidy were observed in phenology, morphology, and production traits on 57 octoploid and 52 tetraploid basin wildrye from the intermountain Western U.S. (P<0.01). Octoploids had larger...

Managing wildland fire is an exercise in risk perception, sensemaking and resilient performance. Risk perception begins with individual size up of a wildfire to determine a course of action, and then becomes collective as the fire management team builds and continuously updates their common perception of risk. Karl Weick has called this “sensemaking.” This act of communication, of collecting and selecting information, naming it, and passing it on, in various forms and stages of completeness, from one individual or team to another - determines how resilient and effective the team’s performan...

Black carbon (BC) emitted from fires in northern Eurasia is transported and deposited on ice and snow in the Arctic and can accelerate its melting during certain times of the year. Thus, we developed a high spatial resolution (500m x 500 m) dataset to examine daily BC emissions from fires in this region for 2002-2015. Black carbon emissions were estimated based on MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) land cover maps and detected burned areas, the Forest Inventory Survey of the Russian Federation, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Tier-1 Global Biomass Carbon...

Fire refugia, sometimes referred to as fire islands, shadows, skips, residuals, or fire remnants, are an important element of the burn mosaic, but we lack a quantitative framework that links observations of fire refugia from different environmental contexts. Here, we develop and test a conceptual model for how predictability of fire refugia varies according to topographic complexity and fire weather conditions. Refugia were quantified as areas unburned or burned at comparatively low severity based on remotely sensed burn severity data. We assessed the relationship between refugia and a...

The Native Plant Propagation Protocol Database was launched in 2001 to provide an online mechanism for sharing information about growing native plants. It relies on plant propagators to upload their protocols (detailed directions for growing particular native plants) so that others may benefit from their experience. Currently the database has nearly 3000 protocols and can be freely searched, and the information can be downloaded without restrictions or registration. In this article, we provide some background on the database, the website where it is housed, and some basic instructions for...

Potamodromous fishes move and complete their life cycle entirely within freshwater. Myers (1949) proposed the term potamodromous to distinguish freshwater migratory fishes from diadromous fishes, which migrate between the sea and freshwater and oceanodromous fishes that migrate wholly within the sea. Diadromous fishes include anadromous, catadromous and amphidromous fishes (see Chapter 2, Morais and Daverat 2016). Despite its historical precedence, potamodromous has not been broadly accepted. Three other terms, 'non-anadromous', 'resident', and 'inland' are more commonly substituted in the...