Treesearch

Wildfires can result in significant, long-lasting impacts to ecological, social, and economic systems. It is necessary, therefore, to identify and understand the risks posed by wildland fire, and to develop cost-effective mitigation strategies accordingly. This report presents a general framework with which to assess wildfire risk and explore mitigation options, and illustrates a process for implementing the framework. Two key strengths of the framework are its flexibility - allowing for a multitude of data sources, modeling techniques, and approaches to measuring risk - and its scalability...

The Island Park Sustainable Fire Community (IPSFC) project area covers approximately 750,000 acres and includes portions of the Island Park and Ashton Ranger Districts of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest in Idaho and the Hebgen Basin of the Hebgen Lake Ranger District of the Gallatin National Forest in Montana.

There has been speculation that quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) dominance of forests will increase due to mortality caused by mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) (MPB). High aspen sucker densities have been observed inthe years following MPB-caused pine mortality, but it remains unclear if this disturbance will result in a pulse of aspen recruitment to forest overstories. Many factors will affect aspen recruitment and overstory health. Surviving conifer overstory and advance regeneration will limit available light and other resources, potentially decreasing aspen suckering,...

The Rocky Mountain Research Station is one of seven regional units that make up the USDA Forest Service Research and Development organization - the most extensive natural resources research organization in the world. We maintain 12 field laboratories throughout a 12-state territory encompassing the Great Basin, Southwest, Rocky Mountains, and parts of the Great Plains.

Understanding a species’ thermal niche is becoming increasingly important for management and conservation within the context of global climate change, yet there have been surprisingly few efforts to compare assessments of a species’ thermal niche across methods. To address this uncertainty, we evaluated the differences in model performance and interpretations of a species’ thermal niche when using different measures of stream temperature and surrogates for stream temperature. Specifically, we used a logistic regression modeling framework with three different indicators of stream thermal...

Rocky Mountain penstemon, a member of the Figwort family (Schrophulariaceae) is a semi-evergreen, native, perennial forb with fibrous roots and is 35-70 cm tall. Plants are mostly glabrous and the leaves are entire. Basal and lower leaves are 5-15 cm long, 5-16 mm wide, narrowly oblanceolate, rounded at the tip and tapering to the base. The upper leaves are 4-10 cm long, 2-7 mm wide, linear and often folded. The flower stalks have a whorl of 1 or 2 flowers (sometimes 4) at each node. The sepals are 3-5 mm long, glabrous and ovate or rounded to obtuse and are glabrous. The petals are 24-32...

Incorporating vertical vegetation structure into models of animal distributions can improve understanding of the patterns and processes governing habitat selection. LiDAR can provide such structural information, but these data are typically collected via aircraft and thus are limited in spatial extent. Our objective was to explore the utility of satellite-based LiDAR data from the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS) relative to airborne-based LiDAR to model the north Idaho breeding distribution of a forest-dependent ecosystem engineer, the Red-naped sapsucker (Sphyrapicus nuchalis)....

This report highlights selected accomplishments by the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station's Wildland Fire and Fuels Research & Development projects in support of the National Fire Plan from 2008 through 2012. These projects are examples of the broad range of knowledge and tools developed by National Fire Plan funding beginning in 2008.

The relationship between large fire occurrence and drought has important implications for fire prediction under current and future climates. This study’s primary objective was to evaluate correlations between drought and fire-danger- rating indices representing short- and long-term drought, to determine which had the strongest relationships with large fire occurrence at the scale of the western United States during the years 1984-2008. We combined 4-8-km gridded drought and fire-danger-rating indices with information on fires greater than 404.7 ha (1000 acres). To account for differences...

Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. [Asteraceae]) is an essential component of shrub-steppe ecosystems in the Great Basin of the US, where degradation due to altered fire regimes, invasive species, and land use changes have led to increased interest in the production of high-quality big sagebrush seedlings for conservation and restoration projects. Seedling storage is an important consideration in the production of high-quality planting stock, yet little is known about optimal storage conditions for this species. Our survey of nurseries in western US found that only 13% of those that...