Treesearch

Premise: Intraspecific variation in drought resistance traits, such as drought escape, appear to be frequent within wild, ruderal forb species. Understanding how these traits are arrayed across the landscape, particularly in association with climate, is critical to developing forbs for wildland restoration programs. Use of forbs is requisite for maintaining biological diversity and ecological services. Methods: Using 6074 greenhouse‐grown Chaenactis douglasii seedlings from 95 wild, seed‐sourced populations across the western United States, we recorded bolting phenology and estimated...

Animals often rely on the presence of multiple, spatially segregated cover types to satisfy their ecological needs; the juxtaposition of these cover types is called landscape complementation. In ecosystems that have been homogenized because of human land use, such as fire-suppressed forests, management activities have the potential to increase the heterogeneity of cover types and, therefore, landscape complementation. We modeled changes to California spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis) nesting/roosting habitat, foraging habitat and habitat co-occurrence (i.e. landscape complementa...

Expected future scenarios including climate change, a greater incidence of urban conflagrations, and continued fuel-load accumulations will increase demands on the wildfire management system in the United States, resulting in increased difficulty managing wildfires. There is a need to expand concepts of effectiveness to manage more extreme and complex events.

Stakeholders and rights-holders around the world are increasingly calling on the private sector and governments to ensure that development projects respond to and respect their needs, while advancing multiple goals of job creation, rural development, conservation, and more. Yet how projects meet diverse needs and goals is underexamined, in particular as private companies’ and governments’ needs and goals do not necessarily align with those of the people who will be affected by them. Additionally, the stakes may be particularly high in a world affected by climate change, where “green...

The southeastern United States was historically characterized by open forests featuring fire-adapted species before land-use change. We compared tree composition and densities of historical tree surveys (1802 to 1841) to contemporary tree surveys, with the application of a similarity metric, in the Coastal Plain ecological province of Mississippi, southeastern USA. We detected the boundary between historical pine and oak-pine open forests and differentiated historical and current forests. In the Coastal Plain, historical open forests converted from fire-tolerant longleaf pine (Pinus...

Satellite data are effective for mapping wildfires, particularly in remote locations where monitoring is rare. Geolocated fire detections can be used for enhanced fire management and fire modelling through daily fire progression mapping. Here we present the Canadian Fire Spread Dataset (CFSDS), encompassing interpolated progressions for fires >1,000 ha in Canada from 2002-2021, representing the day-of-burning and 50 environmental covariates for every pixel. Day-of-burning was calculated by ordinary kriging of active fire detections from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer and...

Forests are a large carbon sink and could serve as natural climate solutions that help moderate future warming. Thus, establishing forest carbon baselines is essential for tracking climate‐mitigation targets. Western US forests are natural climate solution hotspots but are profoundly threatened by drought and altered disturbance regimes. How these factors shape spatial patterns of carbon storage and carbon change over time is poorly resolved. Here, we estimate live and dead forest carbon density in 19 forested western US ecoregions with national inventory data (2005-2019) to determine: (a)...

Recently burned boreal forests have lower aboveground fuel loads, generating a negative feedback to subsequent wildfires. Despite this feedback, short-interval reburns (≤20 years between fires) are possible under extreme weather conditions. Reburns have consequences for ecosystem recovery, leading to enduring vegetation change. In this study, we characterize the strength of the fire-fuel feedback in recently burned Canadian boreal forests and the weather conditions that overwhelm resistance to fire spread in recently burned areas. We used a dataset of daily fire spread for thousands of...

Anyone who enjoys camping and travel knows that money can be saved by camping instead of staying in a hotel. These days, it is hard to find a hotel room for under $100 per night, meanwhile a campsite goes for well under $50. However, this calculus changes significantly for staff on an incident management team (IMT) evaluating lodging options during a wildland fire - a team that requires considerable daytime office space requirements.

Threats to our forests are changing. Wildfires are burning hotter and more often. Waves of pests and disease are similarly fueled by drought and overgrowth. Supercharged thunderstorms bring heavier, more intense rains, washing away fertile soil and creating dangers like flash floods and landslides. Human activities build threats as we continue harvesting precious resources and expanding urban interfaces with forested environments. As these stressors build, it’s exceedingly important to recognize and monitor forest resilience; the inherent ability of the ecosystem to bounce back from...