Treesearch

Wildland fire professionals at the Federal, State, and local levels have a long tradition of collaborating across agencies and jurisdictions to achieve goals that they could not achieve independently. This fact sheet discusses the reasons and resources for collaboration.Other publications in this series

This report was commissioned by the USDA Forest Service Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit to synthesize existing information on the ecology and management of aspen (Populus tremuloides) in the Sierra Nevada of California and surrounding environs. It summarizes available information on aspen throughout North America from published literature, internal government agency reports, and experienced scientists and managers. The historic distribution, abundance, and ecologic role of aspen in the Sierra Nevada are discussed, along with the reproductive physiology of aspen. Issues that affect aspen...

Bareroot nursery practices that maximize root development and root growth have been studied and documented over a number of years. Each nursery, however, has its own unique combination of climate, soils, species, and stocktypes for which site specific cultural practices are necessary. J. Herbert Stone Nursery, a USDA Forest Service nursery in Central Point, OR, has completed a variety of production trials to adapt general cultural practices to its site. These trials resulted in 1) developing a strategy to maintain high soil porosity through the application of organic matter and tillage...

New remote sensing technologies are now available to lower the cost of doing strategic surveys. A new sampling approach for the Forest Inventory and Analysis program (FIA) of the U.S.D.A. Forest Service is discussed involving a bi-sampling unit (BSU) that is composed of a field sample unit (FSU) centered within a large scale (1:1,000 to 1:3,000) photo sample unit (PSU) of the same size and shape. Within the PSU, a circular plot size is used for timber inventory and a strip plot for riparian buffer assessment and down woody material. On PSUs in previous studies in Alaska and Washington we...

In the mid 1990s, one of the largest bark beetle infestations seen anywhere in the world occurred on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska. In one year, the infestation affected over one million acres of spruce in Alaska. This paper presents a coalescence of several aspects of study on the problem, including tree inventory and mortality, regeneration, understory response, a phytomass study, an assessment of mortality inventory methodology, and an assessment of forest health after the bark beetle infestation declined. The basis for the data collection in these studies was a two-phase sampling...

Fusarium species can cause severe root disease and damping-off in conifer nurseries. Fusarium inoculum is commonly found in most container and bareroot nurseries on healthy and diseased seedlings, in nursery soils, and on conifer seeds. Isolates of Fusarium spp. can differ in virulence; however, virulence and colony morphology are not correlated. Forty-one isolates of Fusarium spp., morphologically indistinguishable from F. oxysporum, were collected from nursery samples (soils, healthy seedlings, and diseased seedlings). These isolates were characterized by amplified fragment length...

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM), an agency within the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI), administers over 261 million surface acres of public land in the western United States, including Alaska. Approximately 69 million acres, or 26 percent, are classified as forested.

The transfer of LANDFIRE data to users is the most important aspect of the Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools Project (LANDFIRE Prototype Project). The creation of an accurate, consistent, nationwide data set provides the foundation for a successful project. The final step is to make the data readily available to the user community. User capabilities and needs vary widely. Many users require LANDFIRE data to solve day-to-day wildfire management problems such as planning fuel treatments or managing active wildfires. Others use LANDFIRE data to gather information over...

Black-tailed prairie dogs have declined across their range by an estimated 98% in the last 100 years as the result of habitat loss, disease and human persecution. Commonly regarded as a keystone species, they represent a unique conservation dilemma because of their importance to other species, (e.g. the black-footed ferret- Mustela nigripes), while having the general reputation as an agricultural pest. Conservation of black-tailed prairie dogs largely involves documenting their status by estimating occupied habitat throughout their range, or attempting to expand prairie dogs into areas...

Utilizing timber harvest residues (biomass) for renewable energy production provides an alternative disposal method to onsite burning that may improve the economic viability of hazardous fuels treatments. Due to the relatively low value of biomass, accurate estimates of biomass volumes and costs of collection and delivery are essential if investment in renewable energy production is to occur. We have established a spatial framework for estimating biomass volumes and costs of availability using publicly available data and models for Ravalli County in Western Montana. We used forest inventory...