Treesearch

The lower Rio del Oso valley is characterized by a single Holocene terrace that is formed by 3 to 5 m of largely overbank fine quartz sand dated by 22 radiocarbon dates between 4610 and 640 14C yrs BP making this one of the best dated sequences in the region. The alluvium contains seven cumulic A horizon paleosols, 5 to 62 cm thick, a remarkable feature seldom seen in other alluvial records. The thickest paleosol "F" formed ca. 3000 to 2000 14C yrs BP and was a valley-wide floodplain soil while the other paleosols were only local in extent. The paleosols are dark brown to very dark grayish...

A recent drought has caused compositional and structural changes in Interior West forests. Recent periodic and annual inventory data provide an opportunity to analyze forest changes on a grand scale. This "natural experiment" also provides opportunities to test the effectiveness of Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) methodologies. It also presents some analysis challenges, because analysts must evaluate the relative contributions of data obtained on phase 2 and phase 3 (i.e., Forest Health Monitoring) plots. In the case of the latter, some variables may reveal less-than-catastrophic...

Chance-constrained optimization is an important method for managing risk arising from random variations in natural resource systems, but the probabilistic formulations often pose mathematical programming problems that cannot be solved with exact methods. A heuristic estimation method for these problems is presented that combines a formulation for order statistic observations with the sample average approximation method as a substitute for chance constraints. The estimation method was tested on two problems, a small fire organization budgeting problem for which exact solutions are known and...

Models of habitat suitability in postfire landscapes are needed by land managers to make timely decisions regarding postfire timber harvest and other management activities. Many species of cavity-nesting birds are dependent on postfire landscapes for breeding and other aspects of their life history and are responsive to postfire management activities (e.g., timber harvest). In addition, several cavity nesters are designated as species at risk. We compare the ability of 2 types of models to distinguish between nest and non-nest locations of 6 cavitynesting bird species (Lewis's woodpecker...

Understanding wilderness use and users is essential to wilderness management. However, there have only been a limited number of studies specifically designed to detect changes in use and user characteristics across time. Recreation use of the U.S. National Wilderness Preservation System (NWPS) has increased since its creation in 1964, along with many other changes in influences on society's relationship with wilderness. This article describes a series of visitor trend studies at the Bob Marshall Wilderness Complex in Montana, and identifies some of the challenges encountered in estimating...

Wilderness managers strive to provide quality recreation experiences. Because of this commitment, a need exists to further incorporate experiential aspects into current planning and management frameworks. This article suggests a focus on relationships with wilderness, moving beyond the examination of single transactions with a setting toward a consideration of the dynamic engagements visitors accumulate with wilderness over time. Understanding these relationships relative to social and cultural change may allow managers to incorporate diverse meanings into management planning and provide...

Cross-scale spatial and temporal perspectives are important for studying contagious landscape disturbances such as fire, which are controlled by myriad processes operating at different scales. We examine fire regimes in forests of western North America, focusing on how observed patterns of fire frequency change across spatial scales. To quantify changes in fire frequency across spatial scale, we derive the event-area (EA) relationship and the analogous interval-area (IA) relationship using historical and simulated data from low- and high severity fire regimes. The EA and IA provide...

I grew up in urban China, and to me wilderness was an enchanting yet elusive concept. Although I traveled extensively in China to remote locations, studied leisure and recreation management at Pennsylvania State University at the doctoral level, and taught recreation management at the University of Montana, backcountry camping is simply not a common practice among Chinese people and was not part of my relationship with nature. As a result, I did not know what to expect before my first wilderness trip in 2007. I recently visited the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in the north woods...

In February 2007 the U.S. Forest Service (FS) hosted an external peer review of the agency's wilderness research program area. In response to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and Office of Science and Technology direction to review all federal research programs, the FS has been systematically conducting external peer reviews of its various research program areas. Wilderness was identified as a candidate for such review due to its crosscutting nature; both across disciplines and its applicability and importance to the five federal agencies with management and science responsibilities...

The concept of visitor displacement has important implications for wilderness management and research. Research on actual displacement of wilderness visitors is extremely limited, but this displacement likely follows patterns found for general recreationists: visitors employ a variety of coping responses and displacement is prevalent. Understanding if and when visitors are displaced is useful for anticipating and responding to resource impacts, impacts to visitor experiences, and needs to improve regional management strategies. Displacement implications extend beyond evaluation of on-site...