Treesearch

Forest roads are associated with accelerated erosion and can be a major source of sediment delivery to streams, which can degrade aquatic habitat. Controlling road-related erosion therefore remains an important issue for forest stewardship. Managers are faced with the task to develop efficient road management strategies to achieve conflicting environmental and economic goals. This manuscript uses mathematical programming techniques to identify the efficient frontier between sediment reduction and treatment costs. Information on the nature of the tradeoffs between conflicting objectives can...

Forest road decommissioning is a pro-active mechanism for preventing future habitat degradation and for increasing the likelihood of endangered salmonid survival in the western U.S. High implementation costs however preclude many desirable projects from being undertaken, especially on federally owned land. Previous research and real-world applications have demonstrated the cost savings potential of reusing aggregate recovered from forest roads during decommissioning. These cost savings can effectively subsidize decommissioning projects, suggesting an economic benefit associated with...

Conservation of biological diversity is one of seven criteria used to evaluate forest sustainability in the United States. The status of biological diversity is characterized by nine indicators that report area, protected status, and fragmentation of forest habitats; number and conservation status of forest-associated species; range and abundance of forest species to describe genetic diversity; and institutional commitments to conserve biodiversity. A long-term, nationwide forest inventory system documents the stability of total forest area with notable shifts in age distributions, species...

In recent years mountain pine beetles (MPB), Dendroctonus ponderosae, along with several other bark beetle species, have severely damaged coniferous forests in the western United States (U.S.) and Canada (Morris and Walls, 2009). Colorado provides one example of a region that has been heavily affected. The Colorado State Forest Service estimates that 769,000ha of Colorado's forests, of all jurisdictions, have been infested with MPB since the outbreak began in 1996 (Leatherman, 2009). An important consequence of this damage is declining utility (i.e. a reduction in the level of satisfaction...

Policies such as the US Healthy Forests Restoration Act (HFRA) mandate collaboration in planning to create benefits such as social learning and shared understanding among partners. However, some question the ability of top-down policy to foster successful local collaboration. Through in-depth interviews and document analysis, this paper investigates social learning and transformative learning in three case studies of Community Wildfire Protection Planning (CWPP), a policy-mandated collaboration under HFRA. Not all CWPP groups engaged in social learning. Those that did learned most about...

Group selection silviculture creates canopy openings that can alter connectivity in patchy forests, thereby affecting wildlife movement and fire behavior. We examined effects of group selection silviculture on percolation (presence of continuously forested routes across a landscape) in Sierra Nevada East-side pine forest in northern California, USA. Four ~ 250 ha project areas were analyzed at three map resolutions in three ways: analyzing forest cover maps for percolation before and after group-selection treatment, placing simulated group openings in forest cover maps until fragmentation...

The Valles Caldera National Preserve (VCNP), located in the heart of the Jemez Mountains in northcentral New Mexico, is a special place for many residents of the region. The large volcanic caldera, formerly the privately owned Baca Ranch, is an 89,000-acre property known for its scenic meadows and abundant wildlife, including herds of elk. The U.S. purchased the property in 2000, and the VCNP is now managed by a private trust, many of whose members serve through presidential appointment. Discussions are currently underway in the Senate concerning a proposal to transfer the VCNP to the...

Privacy and its functions are desirable attributes of the human experience in wilderness areas, where outstanding opportunities for solitude is legally mandated. Privacy, the ability to choose how and when to interact and exchange information with other people, enhances opportunities for both personal growth and interaction with the wilderness environment. This study assessed the effect of use level and length of stay on the degree to which privacy and its functions were experienced on wilderness trips. Factor analysis identified one privacy experience factor and two privacy function...

In this presentation, we describe results of a survey to homeowners living in wildfire-prone areas of two counties along the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. The survey was designed to elicit information on homeowners' experience with wildfire, perceptions of wildfire risk on their property and neighboring properties, mitigation efforts undertaken to reduce wildfire risk, information sources for wildfire risk and mitigation, level of involvement in the local community, and attitudes toward wildfire and the environment in general. The sample was randomly drawn from a populatio...

The online resource Wilderness.net currently provides quick access to the text of every public law designating wilderness in the U.S. National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS). This article describes two new searchable databases recently completed and added to the information available on Wilderness.net to help wilderness managers and others understand and interpret these laws. The first database provides access to a legislative history library and reference guide, and the second database provides access to legislated special provisions. Each database is described below in terms of...