Treesearch

In an era when preparedness budgets have never been higher, when cooperation between partners has never been better, when predictive models have never been more sophisticated, and when technological support has never been more available ... we are suffering from the worst wildfires since America organized to eliminate the large fire problem at the turn of the last century.

This paper describes the number of fires, area burned, causes and seasonality of fires over a ten year period from 2002-2012 and investigates different fire management strategies and their effectiveness in the Afram headwaters forest reserve in Ghana. Data were collected from interviews of stakeholders in two communities adjacent to the reserve, and from 2002-2012 fire reports of the Ghana National Fire Service and Forest Service Division. For the period studied, nearly all fires were human-caused, and most arose through land use activities such as farming (19 percent) or hunting (15...

Decades of fire suppression have significantly altered the vegetation structure and composition of savannas, woodlands, and forests. The presence of endangered species and other species of conservation concern in these fire-suppressed systems makes re-introducing fire more challenging. In oak-juniper woodlands of central Texas, we are presented with the challenge of re-introducing fire to attempt to increase oak regeneration, while simultaneously not substantially altering the vegetation structure and composition of the burned areas to avoid degrading habitat that is currently occupied by...

This report is a joint effort of the Southwest Regional Climate Hub and the California Subsidiary Hub (Sub Hub). The Southwest Regional Climate Hub covers Arizona, California, Hawai‘i and the U.S. affiliated Pacific Islands, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah and contains vast areas of western rangeland, forests, and high-value specialty crops (Figure 1). The California Sub Hub works with the issues of climate change effects on forests and agriculture in California, including internationally important specialty crops. The southwestern region contains high climatic diversity, with locations that...

Returning a site or landscape to some historical condition is a long-standing objective in restoration ecology, but restoration ecology is by no means limited solely to the goal of returning an ecosystem to a prior condition. Restoration, done properly, can increase biodiversity, restore structure and connectivity, and enhance a variety of ecosystem services that may better position ecosystems to adapt to climate change, even where the primary intent of restoration may have had little to do with climate adaptation. In this discussion, we address how ecological restoration maintains...

A national survey of managers was developed to support interagency wilderness strategic planning. The focus was on major challenges, perceived needs for science and training, and accomplishments of 1995 Strategic Plan objectives. The survey was administered to managers at the four federal agencies with wilderness management responsibilities: the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Forest Service. In spring 2014, responses were received from 368 managers. The highest ranking threat perceived was "lack of political and financial support...

Aim: Deterministic niche theory predicts that increasing environmental heterogeneity increases species richness. In contrast, a recent stochastic model suggests that heterogeneity has a unimodal effect on species richness since high levels of heterogeneity reduce the effective area available per species, thereby increasing the likelihood of stochastic extinction (the ‘area-heterogeneity trade-off’). We tested these contrasting predictions using data on bird distributions in North America.Location: North America.Methods: The effect of heterogeneity on species richness was tested using...

Expansion of juniper on U.S. rangelands is a significant environmental concern. Prescribed fire is often recommended to control juniper. To that end, a prescribed burn was conducted in a Great Basin juniper woodland. Conditions were suboptimal; fire did not encroach into mid- or late-seral stages and was patchy in the early-seral stage. This study evaluated the effects of the burn on biological soil crusts of early-seral juniper. Fire reduced moss cover under sagebrush and in shrub interspaces. Mosses were rare under juniper; their cover was unaffected there. Lichens were uncommon under...

Potential effects of hypothesized anthropogenic climate change are raising concerns about the sustainability of development in terms of both people and the rest of the environment. Land use change at the global scale presents many challenges for the research community. Past land use has a definite effect on future ecosystems, but it is challenging to predict future outcomes for biodiversity and productivity of ecosystems. The mechanisms that create complex patterns of forests at different scales (e.g., microscopic, stand-level) will require further systematic analysis.

1. Biodiversity conservation is a primary function of protected areas. However, protected areas also attract people, and therefore, land use has intensified at the boundaries of these lands globally. In the USA, since the 1970s, housing growth at the boundaries (