Treesearch

Public support is crucial for successful fuels management, but vocal opposition can mask broader yet quieter community acceptance. It is helpful for land managers to have a picture of all perspectives, not just the most vocal ones. And what do communities think about fuels treatments?

An extreme multi-year drought with extensive bark beetle outbreaks in California from 2012 to 2016 killed an estimated 147 million trees. This included ponderosa pine, incense cedar, white fir, and pinyon pine, rapidly changing forests over vast areas. Recently published work by Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) researchers Sharon Hood and Charlotte Reed found that major tree mortality events like these increase surface and canopy fuels - dead needles, branches, and logs - which may result in more extreme forest fires and increased emissions when these areas burn. Drought often...

Federal land managers are asked to meet diverse goals ranging from sustainable resource management to social equity. But across the vast expanse of the National Wilderness Preservation System, some of these goals may be perceived and experienced differently. To encourage conversations around how to meet these goals, Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute (ALWRI) Research Social Scientist, Dr. Lauren Redmore, recently teamed up with Dr. Aby Sène-Harper, an assistant professor of Parks and Conservation Area Management at Clemson University, as guest editors for a special issue of the...

The USDA Forest Service recently launched a Wildfire Crisis Strategy outlining objectives to safeguard communities and other values at risk by substantially increasing the pace and scale of fuel reduction treatment. This analysis quantified layered operational constraints to mechanical fuel reduction treatments, including existing vegetation, protected areas, steep slopes, and administrative boundaries in twenty-one prioritized landscapes. Results suggest that achieving the objective to treat 20%-40% of high-risk area is unlikely in most landscapes under a business-as-usual approach to...

Increasingly, dry conifer forest restoration has focused on reestablishing horizontal and vertical complexity and ecological functions associated with frequent, low-intensity fires that characterize these systems. However, most forest inventory approaches lack the resolution, extent, or spatial explicitness for describing tree-level spatial aggregation and openings that were characteristic of historical forests. Uncrewed aerial system (UAS) structure from motion (SfM) remote sensing has potential for creating spatially explicit forest inventory data. This study evaluates the accuracy of...

The number of large, high-severity wildfires has been increasing across the western United States over the last several decades. It is not fully understood how changes in the frequency of large, severe wildfires may impact the resilience of conifer forests, due to alterations in regeneration success or failure. Our research investigates 30 years of conifer recovery patterns within 34 high-severity wildfire complexes (1988-1991) of the Northern Rocky Mountains. We evaluate the capability of snow-cover Landsat to characterize conifer tree recolonization of high-severity burn patches....

Increasing frequency of droughts and wildfire are sparking concerns that these compounded disturbance events are pushing forested ecosystems beyond recovery. An improved understanding of how compounded events affect tree physiology and mortality is needed given the reliance of fire management planning on accurate estimates of postfire tree mortality. In this study, we use a toxicological dose-response approach to quantify the impact of variable-intensity drought and fire on the physiology and mortality of Pinus monticola and Pseudotsuga menziesii saplings. We show that the dose-response...

LANDFIRE (LF) has been producing periodic spatially explicit vegetation change maps (i.e., LF disturbance products) across the entire United States since 1999 at a 30 m spatial resolution. These disturbance products include data products produced by various fire programs, field-mapped vegetation and fuel treatment activity (i.e., events) submissions from various agencies, and disturbances detected by the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS)-based Remote Sensing of Landscape Change (RSLC) process. The RSLC process applies a bi-temporal change detection...

This report traces the flow of Idaho’s 2019 timber harvest through the primary wood products industry and characterizes the structure, condition, and economic impacts of Idaho’s forest products sector. Historical changes in the forest products industry, as well as trends in timber harvest, production, sawmill capacity, mill residuals, and sales value, are presented. Employment and worker earnings in the State’s primary and secondary forest products industries are also discussed. Periodic survey data collected from the forest products industry provide detailed information on Idaho’s timber...

This report traces the flow of timber harvested in Utah during calendar year 2020; describes the composition and operations of the state’s primary forest products industry; and quantifies volumes and uses of wood fiber. Recent wood products industry changes are discussed, as well as trends in timber harvest, production, and sales of primary wood products.