Treesearch

This issue represents the final one in volume 76 of Journal of Wildlife Management. As this one is pretty much in the books, one cannot help but wonder what the future holds for the journal. Lenny Brennan is putting together a piece for Wildlife Society Bulletin to examine how The Wildlife Society publications have changed through time. He solicited input from past and present Editor-In-Chiefs, including me. In my contribution, I contrasted topics of papers published in volume 31 of the journal (1967) with those published in volume 75 (2011). Over this span of nearly 35 years, papers...

Bond, Monica L.; Siegel, Rodney B.; Hutto, Richard L.; Saab, Victoria A.; Shunk, Stephen A. 2012. A new forest fire paradigm: The need for high-severity fires. The Wildlife Professional. Winter 2012: 46-49. During the 2012 fire season from June through August, wildfires in the drought-stricken western and central United States burned more than 3.6 million acres of forest and shrubland. In the hot, dry, windy conditions seen that season, a single spark can start an understory fire that ascends into the canopies of overstory trees and results in a ‘mega-fire’ that escapes control efforts,...

The Duke University FACE facility is located near Chapel Hill, in Orange County, North Carolina on the eastern edge of the North Carolina piedmont. The initial prototype plot was established in June, 1994 and eleven additional treatment plots were activated in August 1996 and operated until October, 2010. To date, 263 publications have reported on results from the experiment. CO2 enrichment was discontinued in October 2010 and the final harvest began. Trees for the decomposition study were harvested in early 2011. Later that year, the logs of three diameter classes representing different...

A hydrologic research network was established in Arizona in the 1950s and 1960s called the Arizona Watershed Program (Baker et al. 1999). It consisted of a number of public agencies and private groups interested in obtaining more water for future economic growth while maintaining the State's watersheds in good condition. As part of the Program. paired watershed studies were established at Workman Creek, Three-Bar, Whitespar, Mingus Mountain, Battle Flat. Beaver Creek, Castle Creek, Willow Creek, Thomas Creek, Seven Springs, and Stermer Ridge. Initially, most of the research emphasis was on...

The most sustainable and best quality fresh water sources in the world originate in forested watersheds (Dissmeyer 2000, Brooks et al. 2003, Barten and Ernst 2004). The biological, chemical, and physical characteristics of forest soils are particularly well suited to delivering high quality water to streams, and moderating the climatic extremes which affect stream hydrology and water quality (Neary et al. 2009). Forest soils are usually characterized by high porosities, low bulk density, and high saturated hydraulic conductivities and infiltration rates (Neary 2011). Consequently, surface...

Seeding is a key management tool for arid rangeland. In these systems, however, seeded species often fail to establish. A recent study inWyoming big sagebrush steppe suggested that over 90% of seeded native grass individuals die before seedlings emerged. This current study examines the timing and rate of seed germination, seedling emergence, and seedling death related to this demographic bottleneck. We seeded monocultures of two native perennial bunchgrasses, Pseudoroegenaria spicata (Pursh) A. Love and Elymus elymoides (Raf.) Swezey, and one introduced bunchgrass, Agropyron desertorum...

Water is a critical resource in the Southwestern United States. The demands for reliable regional water sources have always been present but are increasing as the human population continues to grow, especially in the Metro-Phoenix Area, which once supported Sonoran Desert ecosystems. While much of the land has been converted from farming to houses and other urban developments that use less water, the need for a reliable water supply is not diminished. The Phoenix Area's main supply of surface water is the Salt-Verde River System. These two rivers originate in the mountains to the north and...

Forest harvest scheduling has been modeled using deterministic and stochastic programming models. Past models seldom address explicit spatial forest management concerns under the influence of natural disturbances. In this research study, we employ multistage full recourse stochastic programming models to explore the challenges and advantages of building spatial optimization models that account for the influences of random stand-replacing fires. Our exploratory test models simultaneously consider timber harvest and mature forest core area objectives. Each model run reports first-period...

Ripple et al. (2011) proposed a hypothesis that the recovery of gray wolves (Canis lupus) may positively affect the viability of threatened Canada lynx (Lynx canadensis) populations in the contiguous United States through indirect species interactions. Ripple et al. (2011) proposed 2 key trophic linkages connecting wolf restoration with lynx recovery. First, recovering wolf populations may benefit lynx through reduced interference and exploitative competition with coyotes (C. latrans). Second, recovering wolf populations may benefit lynx through reduced exploitative competition among...

Biotic resistance is a commonly invoked hypothesis to explain why most exotic plant species naturalize at low abundance. Although numerous studies have documented negative impacts of native consumers on exotic plant performance, longer-term multi-generation studies are needed to understand how native consumer damage to exotics translates to their population-level suppression over large landscapes.