Treesearch

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is an important component of high-elevation ecosystems throughout the northern Rocky Mountains; however, the species was recently listed as “threatened” under the Endangered Species Act due to widespread mortality throughout its native range. Land managers tasked with whitebark pine conservation and restoration require information on strategies that can positively influence whitebark pine establishment and promote growth and defense of preexisting trees on the landscape. Our study investigated the response of whitebark pine tree growth and resin duct...

Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) in the Columbia River basin are threatened by anthropogenic changes to migratory corridors, estuaries, and natal habitats. Streams provide spatially heterogeneous natal habitats essential for salmon spawning and rearing life stages. We fit a statistical state-space model to salmon populations in Idaho’s Middle Fork Salmon River (MFSR) to assess spatial variation in natal productivity and population growth. Our model integrated multiple long-term data sets to estimate variation in per-capita smolt production and smolt-to-adult (SAR) survival. Smolt...

Understanding how some introduced plants achieve invasive status while most simply become naturalized is a fundamental question in invasion ecology. Traditional approaches comparing native and introduced plants have linked ruderal traits such as annual life history, high fecundity, and rapid growth rates to invasiveness. However, they do not explain why other introduced species bearing similar traits fail to become invasive, possibly because generic comparisons ignore local processes that drive community assembly. Herein, we contrasted native and introduced annuals in the context of local...

The acute-phase response (APR) is an adaptive emergency life-history stage, wherein vertebrates exhibit fever and anorexia to survive an infection. However, induced immune responses are energetically costly, and sick animals may reduce physical activity to compensate. Tests of this predicted energetic trade-off in free-ranging animals are rare due to difficulties in measuring individual physiology and behaviour under immune challenge in natural settings. However, recent advances in biologging technology now make such studies possible. We surgically implanted heart rate/temperature loggers...

For her entire Forest Service career, Deborah (Debbie) Page-Dumroese wanted to figure out how to maximize the use of excess woody residues or low-value material (LVM) left on the landscape following a timber harvest or fuels treatment to reduce carbon dioxide release to the atmosphere and improve air quality. And as a research soil scientist with the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS), she was equally concerned about the burn scars that resulted from burning woody residues.

Evolutionary niches are great for species survival, but when humans get stuck arguing from viewpoint niches, it can mean bad news for ecosystem resilience. The Utah Forest Restoration Working Group, a collaborative partnership of agencies and stakeholders, operates beyond niches and uses group consensus. Their approach has resulted in a big first: agreement among divergent stakeholders on a step-by-step protocol for deciding how to restore and protect riparian forests in Utah.

Climate change and disturbance threaten forested ecosystems across the globe. Our ability to predict the future distribution of forests requires understanding the limiting factors for regeneration. Forest canopies buffer against near-surface air temperature and vapour pressure deficit extremes, and ongoing losses of forest canopy from disturbances such as wildfire can exacerbate climate constraints on natural regeneration. Here we combine experimental, empirical and simulation-based evidence to show that soil surface temperatures constrain the low-elevation extent of forests in the western...

Ecological disturbance can promote or reduce community biodiversity depending on its severity. Beekeeping activities represent a type of ecological disturbance when large numbers of honey bees are introduced to a landscape and interact with the local plant and pollinator community. In this study, we characterized the effect of immediate and long-term low-density migratory beekeeping on the diversity and abundance of native bees in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (China). We found that the presence of apiaries and the number of honey bees reduced native bee abundances in the local bee community,...

The Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) is a forest dynamics modeling system with geographic variants covering forested areas of the contiguous United States. FVS was developed in the early 1980s and is used throughout the United Sates for predicting forest development and the effects of alternative forest management actions. FVS variants are also used in Canada and Europe. The Sixth Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) Conference, held March 7-9, 2023, in Fort Collins Colorado, consisted of 29 offered presentations and two invited panel discussions organized into three main topic areas: Model...

Idaho has unique legislation declaring that the state pay for wildfire suppression on state lands and forested private lands. Representatives of the Idaho Department of Lands, the governor’s office, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service, and Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management met repeatedly starting around 2020 to decide who would pay for wildfire suppression. The interagency working group couldn’t agree on how to define “forested land.”