Treesearch

Recently completing over a decade of research, the NASA/NACP funded North American Forest Dynamics (NAFD) project has led to several important advancements in the way U.S. forest disturbance dynamics are mapped at regional and continental scales. One major contribution has been the development of an empirical and rule-based modeling approach which addresses two of the major challenges associated with mapping forest disturbance. The first challenge is that no single spectral band or index responds consistently to all disturbance types. To overcome this challenge we use a new, non-parametric...

In their Policy Forum "Reform forest fire management" (18 September, p. 1280), M. P. North et al. highlight public support and improved spatial planning as key leverage points to deemphasize fire exclusion and expand beneficial fire. Although these steps are necessary, we caution that they are insufficient to overcome barriers to change.

The aims of this research were to develop and test a scale used to measure leadership in wildland firefighting using two samples of USA wildland firefighters. The first collection of data occurred in the spring and early summer and consisted of an online survey. The second set of data was collected towards late summer and early fall (autumn). The second set of data was collected via hard-copy surveys that were mailed in by respondents who were recruited via email and in person at large wildland fires. Through confirmatory factor analyses, a three-factor, higher-order, multidimensional...

Forest change information is critical in forest planning, ecosystem modeling, and in updating forest condition maps. The Landsat satellite platform has provided consistent observations of the world’s ecosystems since 1972. A number of innovative change detection algorithms have been developed to use the Landsat archive to identify and characterize forest change. The inter-agency Landscape Change Monitoring System (LCMS) has been launched to engage these cutting edge methodologies in a national-scale, sustained change monitoring operation. A Science Team supporting LCMS has evaluated the...

The Image-based Change Estimation (ICE) protocols have been designed to respond to several Agency and Department information requirements. These include provisions set forth by the 2014 Farm Bill, the Forest Service Action Plan and Strategic Plan, the 2012 Planning Rule, and the 2015 Planning Directives. ICE outputs support the information needs by providing estimates of land use and land cover area and change, together with agent of change. ICE data is collected by interpreting two years of NAIP imagery and identifying areas of land cover and land use change (LCLUC). Forest Inventory and...

As part of the U.S. Forest Service (USFS), National Forest System (NFS) comprehensive plan for carbon monitoring, a detailed temporal mapping of forest disturbances across all National Forests in the United States has been conducted. A long-term annual time series of data layers that show the timing, extent, type, and magnitude of disturbance beginning in 1990 and ending in 2011 is available for all the USFS Regions. Our mapping approach starts with an automated initial detection of annual disturbances using imagery captured within the growing season from the Landsat archive. Through a...

We present a new R package called ShapeSelectForest recently posted to the Comprehensive R Archival Network. The package was developed to fit nonparametric shape-restricted regression splines to time series of Landsat imagery for the purpose of modeling, mapping, and monitoring annual forest disturbance dynamics over nearly three decades. For each pixel and spectral band or index of choice in temporal Landsat data, the package delivers an optimally smoothed rendition of the trajectory constrained to behave in an ecologically sensible manner, assuming one of seven possible “shapes”. It also...

Restoration in the Great Basin is typically a large-scale enterprise, with aerial, drill, and broadcast seeding of perennial species common after wildfires. Arid conditions and invasive plants are significant barriers to overcome, but relatively simple changes to seeds used for restoration may improve success. Here we summarize: 1) the composition of seed mixes used in recent postfire seedings in Nevada, 2) traits that were valued when cultivars and other native seed materials were named and released, and 3) traits that have been demonstrated to increase native perennial grass performance...

Conservation of avian species requires understanding their nesting habitat requirements. We compared 3 aspects of habitat at nest sites (topographic characteristics of nest sites, nest placement within nest sites, and canopy stratification within nest sites) of 2 related species of ground-nesting warblers (Red-faced Warblers, Cardellina rubrifrons, n = 17 nests; Painted Redstarts, Myioborus pictus, n = 22 nests) in the Sky Island mountain ranges of southeastern Arizona. These species nested in several forest and woodland cover types that occurred along an elevational gradient. Red-faced...

The Pinaleno Mountains in southeastern Arizona represent a Madrean sky island ecosystem that contains the southernmost expanse of spruce-fir forest type in North America. This ecosystem is also the last remaining habitat for the Mt. Graham red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus grahamenis), a federally listed endangered species. Due to a general shift in species composition and forest structure of spruce-fir type forests across the Southwest, the ecosystem is being threatened by large high-severity fires, insect infestation, and a general loss of biodiversity. These risk factors have led...