Treesearch

Manuscripts contain a vast amount of information. Some of this information summarizes the state-of-knowledge and sets the stage for the paper. Other information presents data and summarizes analysis. Lastly, results are interpreted in the form of a discussion and management implications. Although a number of checks in the review and editorial processes catch errors before publication, the reality is that mistakes happen and make it to print. By mistakes, we do not necessarily mean publications that you disagree with for one reason or another (e.g., topic, analysis, conclusions). What we do...

We are being increasingly called upon to judge how impactful the work of various individuals is to the scientific and professional communities. At universities we are asked to judge how impactful the publications of our colleagues are when they come up for promotion and tenure; on faculty search committees we are asked to judge how impactful the various candidates will be if hired; and as Editors-in-Chief (EIC) we are constantly evaluating how impactful a particular manuscript will be when deciding on acceptance.

Although the Journal includes papers on species and habitats occurring in different countries and on different continents, and authors are from various places, we question whether or not it is truly an international journal. Our reasoning here is simple and straightforward. We received a fair number of submissions from across the globe. We see the same proportion of these manuscripts based on sound science and addressing appropriate topics as we see for manuscripts originating from the United States. However, fewer papers from outside countries are ultimately published. Why is this so? The...

The USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis program (FIA) recently produced a nationwide map of forest biomass by modeling biomass collected on forest inventory plots as nonparametric functions of moderate resolution satellite data and other environmental variables using Cubist software. Efforts are underway to develop methods to enhance this initial map. We explored the possibility of modeling spatial structure to make such improvements. Spatial structure in the field biomass data as well as in residuals from the map was investigated across 18 ecological zones in the Interior...

Our Nation's forests provide a wealth of ecological, social, and economic resources. These forest lands cover over 300 million hectares of the United States, or about one third of the total land area. Accurate and timely information about them is essential to their wise management and use. The mission of the Forest Service's Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program is to "improve the understanding and management of our Nation's forests." Remote sensing-based maps and geospatial datasets are playing an increasing role in improving that understanding. Examples of maps portraying forest...

Habitat classification models (HCMs) are invaluable tools for species conservation, land-use planning, reserve design, and metapopulation assessments, particularly at broad spatial scales. However, species occurrence data are often lacking and typically limited to presence points at broad scales. This lack of absence data precludes the use of many statistical techniques for HCMs. One option is to generate pseudo-absence points so that the many available statistical modeling tools can be used. Traditional techniques generate pseudoabsence points at random across broadly defined species...

The Eighth World Wilderness Congress met in Anchorage, Alaska, in 2005. The symposium on science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values was the largest of multiple symposia held in conjunction with the Congress. The papers contained in this proceedings were generated at this symposium, submitted by the author or authors for consideration for inclusion in this proceedings, and have been organized into nine major topics: (1) Alaska: past, present and future; (2) connections between wilderness and communities; (3) values to local and distant societies of wilderness protection...

Meadow and forest CO2 amounts sampled beneath an approximately meter deep (steady state) snowpack at a subalpine site in southern Rocky Mountains of Wyoming are observed to vary by nearly 200 ppm over periods ranging from 4 to 15 days. This work employs the model of periodic, pressure-induced, advective transport in permeable media developed in part 1 of this study to investigate these CO2 fluctuations. With the aid of this physically based model, inferences are made about the nature of the physical properties of both the forcing mechanism and the snowpack that contribute to these periodic...

The impact of forest management operations on soil physical properties is important to understand, since management can significantly change site productivity by altering root growth potential, water infiltration and soil erosion, and water and nutrient availability. We studied soil bulk density and strength changes as indicators of soil compaction before harvesting and 1 and 5 years after harvest and site treatment on 12 of the North American Long-Term Soil Productivity sites. Severe soil compaction treatments approached root-limiting bulk densities for each soil texture, while moderate...

We investigated the tritrophic interactions among southwestern dwarf mistletoe [Arceuthobium vaginatum (Willd.) Presl subsp. cryptopodum], mistletoe herbivores, and host pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex Laws. and C. Laws. variety scopulorum Engelm.) associated predators. In an observational study, we characterized differences in pine-associated arthropods and pine branch morphology between branches either parasitized by mistletoe (brooms) or not visibly infected. Compared with noninfected branches, brooms had a more reticulate branching structure, collected 36 times more dead needles and...