Treesearch

Managers of designated wilderness in the United States are challenged by the complex issue of how to address existing dams and water storage. Dams can exist in wilderness, as they are considered a special provision that can provide a variety of benefits to society; however, dams are also considered a potential threat to wilderness character. We review the issue of dams in wilderness, and then present the results from a study in the Rattlesnake Wilderness in Montana where visitor opinions around dam removal or maintenance were assessed. Our aim through this present research is to examine...

Satellite, radar, and strategically placed Remote Automated Weather Stations (RAWS) are a few of the many technologies used to gather data and predict weather. Yet, some weather events are still unpredictable. A morning forecast for a chance of storms in the afternoon can transform into a major thunderstorm in the middle of an alpine hike.

When land managers or planners need to understand how a segment of a forest road is impacting water quality, the Geomorphic Road Analysis and Inventory Package (GRAIP) is the go-to resource, with in-depth tools for intensive analysis. However, GRAIP’s use is limited to road segments where detailed field data are available or when analyzing high-risk roads within priority watersheds. With the National Forest System having over 380,000 miles of roads, that’s a lot of mileage that can’t be easily analyzed with GRAIP. For situations where field data are unavailable or entire watersheds need...

The Northern Great Plains region, which includes Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming (Figure 25.1), has a wealth of natural resources supporting economies, sense of place, and leisure activities. Climate change impacts on individuals and communities will differ, and it is critical to consider equity dimensions (Ch. 20). Economic dependence on crops, rangelands, and recreation makes residents with land-based livelihoods vulnerable to climate-related changes in weather, as well as flows of water, nutrients, and wildlife across the landscape. This region is largely...

To evaluate the impacts of climate change, it is essential to first understand the many ways in which our climate is changing. Indicators characterize how environmental conditions are changing over time to help communicate climate impacts, risks, and vulnerabilities. Indicators provide foundational science in support of the US Global Change Research Program’s (USGCRP) sustained assessment process, including the National Climate Assessment (NCA). In the NCA, indicators are defined as data (presented as charts or maps) based on historical observations and measurements that are used to track...

The Northwest - Washington, Oregon, and Idaho - encompasses diverse communities, economies, and ecosystems, with almost 14 million residents.1 From western coastal regions to forested mountains to arid shrub-steppe, the Northwest is home to numerous culturally and economically important native plants and animals. Northwest ecosystems provide housing, recreation, food, and income that support the collective health and well-being of the region’s communities and economies. The 43 Federally Recognized Tribes in the Northwest also rely on the region’s ecosystems to sustain their livelihoods....

Residents and visitors in the Southern Great Plains - Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas - benefit from the region’s working coasts, sandy beaches, southern forests, grasslands, urban areas, rural towns, scrublands, rangelands, and croplands. The region spans 20 ecoregions, each with distinct and diverse species of plants and animals. Those ecosystems provide clean air and water, healthy soils, landscapes for recreation and tourism, habitats for wild plants and animals, and other benefits. The region’s 47 Federally Recognized Tribes were forcibly relocated to the region from elsewhere or constrict...

Large forest fires have far-reaching impacts on the environment, human health, infrastructure and the economy. Forest fires become large when all forest types across a landscape are dry enough to burn. Mesic forests are the slowest to dry and can act as a barrier to fire growth when they are too wet to burn. Therefore, identifying the factors influencing fire occurrence in mesic forests is important for gauging fire risk across large landscapes. We quantified the key factors influencing the likelihood that an active wildfire would propagate through mesic forest. We analysed 35 large forest...

Fire suppression is the primary management response to wildfires in many areas globally. By removing less-extreme wildfires, this approach ensures that remaining wildfires burn under more extreme conditions. Here, we term this the “suppression bias” and use a simulation model to highlight how this bias fundamentally impacts wildfire activity, independent of fuel accumulation and climate change. We illustrate how attempting to suppress all wildfires necessarily means that fires will burn with more severe and less diverse ecological impacts, with burned area increasing at faster rates than...

This report presents a summary of the most recent Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) data of Utah’s forests based on field data collected between 2008 and 2017. Many of the results were compared to earlier reports using data from 2000-2005 (DeBlander et al. 2010), and from 2003-2012 (Werstak et al. 2016). Utah’s forest land covers 18 million acres, of which 39 percent (7 million acres) are administered by the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Department of Interior, 35 percent (6.4 million acres) by the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and 15 percent (2.7 million acres) are...