Treesearch

Cottonwood (Populus deltoides) woodlands are important habitats for birds. Yet, little is known of the relations between bird habitat and succession in these woodlands. We studied the bird community in cottonwood woodlands from early to late seral stages along the Missouri River in central South Dakota from 1990 to 1992 to describe quantitative relations between avifauna and ecological patterns of succession in cottonwood woodlands along the Missouri River. The vegetation in the early seral cottonwood was characterized by a high density of seedlings and saplings that were restricted to...

The dynamic characteristics of the Middle Rio Grande (MRG) in central New Mexico have been of both interest and concern for the regulatory agencies involved with its management. The MRG has experienced sedimentation problems, prompting the development and implementation of sediment detention and flood control features, including the construction of Cochiti Dam in 1973, whose effects have been significant and extensively studied.

The Middle Rio Grande located in Central New Mexico is one of the most historically documented rivers in the United States. Since the early 20th century regulatory agencies have been interested and concerned with its management. A Hydraulic Modeling Analysis (HMA) of the Corrales reach, located 34 miles downstream of Cochiti Dam, was conducted. An extensive collection of data was used to determine the temporal and spatial changes in the channel. General trends for the Corrales Reach include a decrease in width, width to depth ratio, energy grade line slope and wetted perimeter, and an...

Erosion and sedimentation are natural geomorphic processes characterized by large temporal and spatial variability. Recent radionuclide studies suggest that rare episodic events, such as large wildfires, produce massive sediment yields over time scales of thousands of years, thereby causing long-term average sediment production to exceed present-day average erosion rates by a factor of about 10. Even today, in undisturbed forested watersheds, sediment production is highly variable. Early studies of the effects of grazing and wildfire and surveys of river basins provided a foundation for...

In the last decade, research has proven that remote sensing can provide very useful support to fire managers. This chapter provides an overview of the types of information remote sensing can provide to the fire community. First, it considers fire management information needs in the context of a fire management information system. An introduction to remote sensing then precedes a description of fire information obtainable from remote sensing data (such as vegetation status, active fire detection and burned areas assessment). Finally, operational examples in five African countries illustrate...

Land managers need cost-effective methods for mapping and characterizing fire fuels quickly and accurately. The advent of sensors with increased spatial resolution may improve the accuracy and reduce the cost of fuels mapping. The objective of this research is to evaluate the accuracy and utility of imagery from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) satellite and gradient modeling for mapping fuel layers for fire behavior modeling within FARSITE and FLAMMAP. Empirical models, based upon field data and spectral information from an ASTER image, were...

Land managers need cost-effective methods for mapping and characterizing fire fuels quickly and accurately. The advent of sensors with increased spatial resolution may improve the accuracy and reduce the cost of fuels mapping. The objective of this research is to evaluate the accuracy and utility of imagery from the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) satellite and gradient modeling for mapping fuel layers for fire behavior modeling within FARSITE and FLAMMAP. Empirical models, based upon field data and spectral information from an ASTER image, were...

The spectral, spatial and temporal characteristics of the Landsat data record make it appropriate for mapping fire scars. Twenty-two annual fire scar maps from 1972-­2002 were produced from historical Landsat imagery for a semi-arid savannah landscape on the South Africa-­Botswana border, centred over Madikwe Game Reserve (MGR) in South Africa. A principal components transformation (PCT) helped differentiate the spectral signal of fire scars in each image. A simple, nonparametric, supervised classification (parallelepiped) of the PCT data differentiated burned and unburned areas. During...

Climate, topography, vegetation and land use interact to influence fire regimes.Variable fire regimes may promote landscape heterogeneity, diversification in vegetation pattern and biotic diversity. The objective was to compare effects of alternative land use practices on landscape heterogeneity. Patch characteristics of fire scars were measured from 21 annual burn maps produced from 1972 to 2001 Landsat imagery. Trends in fire patterns under alternative land use practices were compared across a 250,000 ha savanna in southern Africa partitioned into three land use zones. Zone 1, Madikwe...

This report describes results of research conducted in Washington State in 2002 through Interagency Agreement #134100-2-H001 between the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the U.S. Forest Service Rocky Mountain Station (RMRS). This project was a collaborative effort between the USFWS, RMRS, the Washington Department of Fisheries and Wildlife (WDFW), and the U.S. Geological Survey, Biological Resources Division (USGS-BRD). The USFWS established a separate Interagency Agreement with USGS-BRD (Agreement #13410-2- N002; detailed in Peterson et al. 2003) and a Cooperative Agreement with...