Treesearch

This assessment provides information on the conditions of riparian and groundwater-dependent ecosystems in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest (HTNF). We summarized dominant riparian community types and described riparian fish and wildlife habitat. We used peer-reviewed literature, data from the National Forest and other partners, and site visits to inventory and map the distribution of riparian and groundwater-dependent ecosystems, as well as to evaluate the status of five key ecosystem characteristics: (1) surface water and groundwater fluctuations, (2) water quality, (3) channel and...

Large-scale disturbances, such as megafires, motivate restoration at equally large extents. Measuring the survival and growth of individual plants plays a key role in current efforts to monitor restoration success. However, the scale of modern restoration (e.g., >10,000 ha) challenges measurements of demographic rates with field data. In this study, we demonstrate how unoccupied aerial system (UAS) flights can provide an efficient solution to the tradeoff of precision and spatial extent in detecting demographic rates from the air. We flew two, sequential UAS flights at two sagebrush...

Introduction: There is growing recognition that restoring species diversity is crucial to maintaining ecological functions and services. Increasing the diversity of species used in restoration programs has placed greater emphasis on determining the seed transfer needs for a wider array of plants. However, many plants, outside of commercial forestry, lack information that would provide guidance on seed transfer for current or future climates. Generalized seed transfer approaches use climate partitioning to approximate adaptive differentiation among populations and provide an estimation of...

In early 2020 as the world grappled with the profound disruptions wrought by the global pandemic COVID-19, Forest Service personnel managing firefighting crews found themselves in a novel situation where traditional strategies for managing wildfires clashed with the imperative to safeguard firefighters against a highly contagious virus. At the outset of this extraordinary year, and as COVID-19 began spreading through the United States that spring, some typical prefire season preparations such as trainings and new hires were being made but it was not exactly "business as usual." Concerns...

Livestock grazing is a common use of rangelands that can be managed to support rangeland health, including the wide array of ecosystem services that benefit society from public lands and private lands. This requires careful allocation of naturally occurring forage on large landscapes for both domestic and wild herbivores. Managers know grazing can sustain rangeland health as long as they time it right and balance the duration, frequency, and intensity of the grazing. However, forage production on a single area or landscape varies significantly from year to year, which, until recently, has...

In the western United States, wildfire activity has increased the exposure of communities to fires that can devastate lives and destroy homes and businesses. As fires encroach on urban areas, protecting communities from wildfire impacts is a top priority for fire managers. Scientists studying wildland fire in the wildland urban interface (WUI) are particularly interested in using historical data and analytic models to understand how to reduce risks to the WUI.

This climate change vulnerability assessment was conducted in support of land management planning for the Pike-San Isabel (PSI) National Forests and Arapaho- Roosevelt (AR) National Forests in the Front Range region of Colorado, USA. Chapters describe climate and climate change and climate change issues relevant to management of water resources and fisheries, forests, wildlife and birds, community engagement, insects and disease, fire risk, infrastructure and flooding, ecosystem services, and recreation. A concluding chapter explores implications and potential adaptation actions for land...

Providing outdoor recreational opportunities to people and protecting wildlife are dual goals of many land managers. However, recreation is associated with negative effects on wildlife, ranging from increased stress hormones1,2 to shifts in habitat use3,4,5 to lowered reproductive success.6,7 Noise from recreational activities can be far reaching and have similar negative effects on wildlife, yet the impacts of these auditory encounters are less studied and are often unobservable. We designed a field-based experiment to both isolate and quantify the effects of recreation noise on several...

More high-severity wildfire is occurring in the U.S. West and affecting people and forests in challenging ways. In places where mitigating high-severity wildfire is desirable, returning low-severity fire through fuel treatments is common practice. The last quantitative review of fuel treatment research happened 10 years ago. Much has been learned since then.

Archaea, bacteria, fungi, and viruses are organisms that comprise the soil microbiome and play a crucial role in the health of the world’s forests. The soil microbiome is vital in cycling important nutrients needed by vegetation (e.g., nitrogen), stabilizing soil organic matter, and forming essential symbioses with plants, such as the ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) that are obligate symbiotic partners of the conifer tree species that dominate forests of western North America.