Treesearch

Developing consistent inventory and assessment protocols is important to people working on aspen issues in California and Nevada. Efforts have focused on identifying key indicators of ecological condition within aspen stands. The protocols have incorporated a range of factors that create or affect those indicators. Resulting ecological assessments conducted through the protocols describe stand structure, indicate unique stand management conditions, and record factors that might be putting stands at risk. Protocols for determining ecological condition were developed and field-tested by...

Limber pine and Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine are currently threatened by the non-native pathogen white pine blister rust (WPBR). Limber pine is experiencing mortality in the Northern Rocky Mountains and the infection front continues to move southward. The first report of WPBR on Rocky Mountain bristlecone pine was made in 2003 (Blodgett and Sullivan 2004), at a site that is more than 220 miles away from the former infection front. No mortality has been observed in this recently infected area but the species is highly susceptible. There are no ecological reasons to suspect that WPBR on...

Preliminary results are presented from ongoing research on spatial variability of fire effects on soils and vegetation from the Black Mountain Two and Cooney Ridge wildfires, which burned in western Montana during the 2003 fire season. Extensive field fractional cover data were sampled to assess the efficacy of quantitative satellite image-derived indicators of burn severity. The objective of this study was to compare the field burn severity measures to the digital numbers used to produce Burned Area Reflectance Classification (BARC) maps. Canopy density was the field variable most highly...

Landscapes reflect a legacy of tectonic and climatic forcing as modulated by surface processes. Because the morphologic characteristics of landscapes often do not allow us to uniquely define the relative roles of tectonic deformation and climate, additional constraints are required to interpret and predict landscape dynamics. Here we describe a coupled model for the transport of soil and tracer particles at the hillslope scale. To illustrate the utility of this methodology, we modeled the evolution of two synthetic hillslopes with identical initial and boundary conditions but different...

In the early 1980s, silviculturists with the Northeastern Research Station and Monongahela National Forest envisioned that managing some Appalachian hardwood stands to promote two-age structures would be part of an effective strategy for managing multi-use forests. Two-age stands provided the light and seedbed conditions necessary for regenerating numerous desirable hardwood species and maintaining species diversity. The residual overstory trees also served to maintain vertical structure, mast production, wildlife habitat, and esthetic quality in visually sensitive areas. This paper...

This volume presents 29 overview and research papers on the breeding, genetic variation, genecology, gene conservation, and pest resistance of five-needle pines (Pinus L. subgenus Strobus Lemm.) from throughout the world. Overview papers provide information on past and present research as well as future needs for research on white pines from North America, Europe, and Asia. Research papers, more narrowly focused, cover various aspects of genetics. Throughout the distribution of five-needle pines, but particularly in many of the nine North American species, the pathogen Cronartium ribicola...

Concern over accelerating extinction rates and loss of species diversity on a global scale was the subject of E.O. Wilson's seminal volume Biodiversity (Wilson 1988). This work essentially transformed the term "biodiversity" into a household word as a short-hand for species diversity--or more simply, the full array and variety of living organisms on Earth. But the term biodiversity means much more than the complement of plant and animal species that one expects to find in some given area. The term now encompasses not only the diversity of species, but their genetic structure, the interactio...

Recent interest in adding old-growth reserves confiicts with a projected increase in the demand for forest commodities. However, managing for old-growthlike characteristics may permit timber production from stands designed to be similar to primeval forests. A silvicultural strategy based on presettlement forest conditions is being tested on 120 ac of mature loblolly (Pinus taeda) and shortleaf (Pinus echinata) pine on the Crossett Experimental Forest in Arkansas. Reference conditions from historical photographs, surveyor notes, old explorer journals, early research papers, and technical...

Forest Service managers and researchers designed and evaluated alternative disturbance-based fire hazard reduction/ecosystem restoration treatments in a greatly altered low-elevation ponderosa pine/Douglas-fir/western larch wildland urban interface. Collaboratively planned improvement cutting and prescribed fire treatment alternatives were evaluated in simulations of disturbance processes and interactions with the partially restored wildland urban interface conditions. The SIMPPLLE modeling system was used to reconstruct historic landscape conditions across a broad range of fire regimes...

Tests were conducted to evaluate variability among observers for riparian vegetation data collection methods and data reduction techniques. The methods are used as part of a largescale monitoring program designed to detect changes in riparian resource conditions on Federal lands. Methods were evaluated using agreement matrices, the Bray-Curtis dissimilarity metric, the coefficient of variation, the percentage of total variability attributed to observers, and estimates of the number of sites needed to detect change. Community type (CT) cover data differed substantially among the six to...