Treesearch

This report brings together seven case studies of trends in the number and condition of wilderness campsites over periods ranging from 13 to 32 years. Case examples come from five mountainous wilderness areas in the western United States: Sequoia-Kings Canyon Wilderness in California, the Eagle Cap Wilderness in Oregon, the Frank Church-River of No Return Wilderness in Idaho and the Selway-Bitterroot and Lee Metcalf Wilderness in Montana, as well as Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona and Caney Creek Wilderness in Arkansas. The case studies used two different research designs. In one...

In October-November 2011 we measured trace gas emission factors from seven prescribed fires in South Carolina (SC), US, using two Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FTIR) systems and whole air sampling (WAS) into canisters followed by gas- 5 chromatographic analysis. A total of 97 trace gas species were quantified from both airborne and ground-based sampling platforms, making this one of the most detailed field studies of fire emissions to date. The measurements include the first emission factors for a suite of monoterpenes produced by heating vegetative fuels during field fires.

The authors consider a new frontier for the study of wilderness recreation experience, an increasingly common form of blog known as online trip reports. Analysis and discussion in this article is the result of collecting and reflecting upon more than 300 trip reports focused on wilderness areas in the state of Colorado. The authors present a case study of one trip report that demonstrates the intersection of self, narrative, wilderness, and new media technology. While the practice of trip reporting is rather uniform across the cases, the analysis of a single exemplary case reveals that the...

Dendritic ecological networks (DENs) are a unique form of ecological networks that exhibit a dendritic network topology (e.g. stream and cave networks or plant architecture). DENs have a dual spatial representation; as points within the network and as points in geographical space. Consequently, some analytical methods used to quantify relationships in other types of ecological networks, or in 2-D space, may be inadequate for studying the influence of structure and connectivity on ecological processes within DENs. We propose a conceptual taxonomy of network analysis methods that account for...

Fisheries professionals are increasingly tasked with incorporating climate change projections into their decisions. Here we demonstrate how a structured decision framework, coupled with analytical tools and spatial data sets, can help integrate climate and biological information to evaluate management alternatives. We present examples that link downscaled climate change scenarios to fish populations for two common types of problems: (1) strategic spatial prioritization of limited conservation resources and (2) deciding whether removing migration barriers would benefit a native fish also...

The recent mountain pine beetle outbreak in North American lodgepole pine forests demonstrates the importance of insect related disturbances in changing forest structure and ecosystem processes. Phloem feeding by beetles disrupts transport of photosynthate from tree canopies and fungi introduced to the tree's vascular system by the bark beetles inhibit water transport from roots to canopy; the implications of these processes for tree mortality are poorly understood. We hypothesized that the fungus must quickly disrupt tree water relations because phloem girdling, reported in other studies,...

Snowmelt-dominated basins in northern latitudes provide critical habitat for salmonids. As such, these systems may be especially vulnerable to climate change because of potential shifts in the frequency, magnitude, and timing of flows that can scour incubating embryos. A general framework is presented to examine this issue, using a series of physical models that link climate change, streamflow, and channel morphology to predict the magnitude and spatial distribution of streambed scour and consequent risk to salmonid embryos at basin scales. The approach is demonstrated for a mountain...

Over the last several decades, environmental legislation and a growing awareness of historical human disturbance to rivers worldwide (Schumm, 1977; Collins et al., 2003; Surian and Rinaldi, 2003; Nilsson et al., 2005; Chin, 2006; Walter and Merritts, 2008) have fostered unprecedented collaboration among scientists, land managers, and stakeholders to better understand, monitor, and restore riverine ecosystems. The additional concern over climate change (IPCC, 2007) and the need for securing supplies of clean water for the burgeoning world population (Revenga et al., 2000) have further...

The financial impact of wildfire management within the USDA Forest Service challenges the ability of the agency to meet societal demands and maintain forest health. The extent of this financial crisis has been attributed to historical and continuing fire management practices, changing climatic conditions, and increasing human development in fire-prone areas, as well as the lack of financial accountability of fire managers and misaligned incentive structures. In this article, we focus on incentives related to cost containment. We review the literature on the incentive structure facing...

There is growing interest in broad-scale biodiversity assessments that can serve as benchmarks for identifying ecological change. Genetic tools have been used for such assessments for decades, but spatial sampling considerations have largely been ignored. Here, we demonstrate how intensive sampling efforts across a large geographical scale can influence identification of taxonomic units. We used sequences of mtDNA cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 and cytochrome b, analysed with maximum parsimony networks, maximum-likelihood trees and genetic distance thresholds, as indicators of biodiversity...