Treesearch

We consider four main goals when fitting spatial linear models: 1) estimating covariance parameters, 2) estimating fixed effects, 3) kriging (making point predictions), and 4) block-kriging (predicting the average value over a region). Each of these goals can present different challenges when analyzing large spatial data sets. Current research uses a variety of methods, including spatial basis functions (reduced rank), covariance tapering, etc, to achieve these goals. However, spatial indexing, which is very similar to composite likelihood, offers some advantages. We develop a simple...

LANDFIRE (LF), the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools program, is an interagency program that provides comprehensive biological, ecological, and geospatial data and databases for the contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, and insular areas. LF is a vegetation, fire, and fuels characteristic mapping program managed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior with cooperative involvement from The Nature Conservancy and production management via the U.S. Geological Survey at the Earth Resources Observation and Science Center.

Interactions between plants and herbivores are central in most ecosystems, but their strength is highly variable. The amount of variability within a system is thought to influence most aspects of plant-herbivore biology, from ecological stability to plant defense evolution. Our understanding of what influences variability, however, is limited by sparse data. We collected standardized surveys of herbivory for 503 plant species at 790 sites across 116° of latitude. With these data, we show that within-population variability in herbivory increases with latitude, decreases with plant size, and...

What could be better than spending a long weekend botanizing in the cold desert ecosystem of Millard County, UT? How about doing so with over thirty other botanical enthusiasts! We did exactly that at the first annual Intermountain Botanical Foray this June. The Foray is a new program organized out of the Intermountain Herbarium at Utah State University: Each year we will coordinate a botany trip that is open to botanists of all types and levels of experience. We will visit a different region of the Intermountain West each year to document the local flora and build community among botanists.

There is a dire need to improve our prediction capabilities of wildland fire behavior in a range of conditions from marginal burning to the most extreme. In order to develop a more physically-based operational wildland fire behavior model, we need to improve our understanding of the effect of ventilation on burning rate of fuel beds. In this work, wood cribs are used as a simplified fuel bed. A variety of crib designs were tested with stick sizes ranging from 0.32 cm to 1.27 cm and porosities ranging from densely packed to loosely packed. A pressurized box was built that allowed for a...

Respondents to a social survey sent to residents in the Lake Wenatchee Fire & Rescue (LWFR) service district are moderately aware of the risk of wildfire to their home, are discussing wildfire with their neighbors, and are taking action to reduce risk. There are gaps in respondents’ understanding of wildfire risk that might be addressed through educational outreach, particularly from LWFR. Respondents are accepting of wildfire risk reduction strategies at the community level, including fuel treatments and policy options.

Previously established correlations of flame length L with fireline intensity IB are based on theory and data which showed that flame zone depth D of a line fire could be neglected if L was much greater than D. Aims. We evaluated this correlation for wildland fires where D is typically a non-negligible proportion of L (i.e. roughly L/D < ~2). Methods. Experiments were conducted to measure flame length L from line-source fires using a gas burner where IB and D were controlled independently (0.014 ≤ L/D ≤ 13.6). Key results. The resulting correlation showed D significantly reduced L for a...

We integrated a mechanistic wildfire simulation system with an agent-based landscape change model to investigate the feedbacks among climate change, population growth, development, landowner decision-making, vegetative succession, and wildfire. Our goal was to develop an adaptable simulation platform for anticipating risk-mitigation tradeoffs in a fire-prone wildland-urban interface (WUI) facing conditions outside the bounds of experience. We describe how five social and ecological system (SES) submodels interact over time and space to generate highly variable alternative futures even...

Wildfires have nearly become a guaranteed annual event in most western National Forests. Severe fire effects can be mitigated with a goal of minimizing the hydrologic response and promoting soil and vegetation recovery towards the pre-disturbance condition. Sometimes, post-fire actions include salvage logging to recover timber value and to remove excess fuels. Salvage logging was conducted after three large wildfires on the Lolo National Forest in Montana, USA, between 2017 and 2019. We evaluated detrimental soil disturbance (DSD) on seven units that were burned at low, moderate, and high...

Understanding the suitable habitat of endangered species is crucial for agencies such as the Bureau of Land Management to plan management and conservation. However, few species distribution models are directly validated, potentially limiting their application in management. In preparation for a Species Status Assessment of clay-loving wild buckwheat (Eriogonum pelinophilum), an endangered subshrub found in southwest Colorado, we ran a series of species distribution models to estimate the species' potential occupied habitat and validated these models in the field. A 1-meter resolution...