Treesearch

There are management actions that forest managers can undertake to reduce non-forest conversion. They cannot affect the climate, but they can influence the manner in which fires burn. Managers can reduce the probability of stand-replacing fire with fuel treatments, prescribed fire, and allowing lightning-ignited fire to burn when weather conditions are not extreme.

Large-extent, fine-resolution land cover classification maps are an important tool for providing a common baseline and prioritizing management actions. These maps are powerful for landscape-wide land planning and restoration efforts. The low computing requirements and relatively fast processing of the RMRS Raster Utility land cover mapping approach allows for low-cost landscape classification. The RMRS Raster Utility provides a powerful new analytical tool for GIS professionals and land and resource managers.

Soil texture and organic matter content greatly influence how soils recover from a disturbance. High organic matter is positively correlated with resilience. Over 80 percent of the harvest units showed soil recovery following a timber harvest years later. Only 9 percent did not recover, while some units had 100 percent recovery. Root growth, freeze-thaw cycles, and soil fauna contribute to soil recovery from compaction. Using harvest equipment and methods that reduces forest floor compaction decreases soil disturbance that affects tree growth.

Through a project called Rangelands on the Edge, RMRS scientists and collaborators are studying past, current, and projected changes to rangelands related to residential development in the conterminous United States. A recently published report on the project includes maps and analysis of variables such as housing density, road and soil characteristics, topography, proximity to population centers, and land cover, use, and ownership. This information can help refine planning and development decisions related to residential locations, land cover, highway placement, watershed management, and...

To Masticate or Not: Useful Tips for Treating Forest, Woodland, and Shrubland Vegetation is a recent GTR that provides a synthesis of the science on ecological impacts of mastication and what land managers need to know about designing mastication projects. The GTR includes three decision trees that are designed to help land managers determine whether a mastication treatment is possible, and if so, the appropriate equipment to fulfill the management objectives.

Urban tree cover can provide several ecological and public health benefits. Secondary datasets for Tampa, FL, including sociodemographic variables (e.g., race/ethnicity), health data, and interpolated values for features of tree cover (e.g., percent canopy and leaf area index) were analyzed using correlation and regression. Percent canopy cover and leaf area index were inversely correlated to respiratory and cardiovascular outcomes, yet only leaf area index displayed a significant association with respiratory conditions in the logistic regression model. Percent racial/ethnic minority...

Despite the popularity of random forests (RF) as a prediction algorithm, methods for constructing confidence intervals for population means using this technique are still only sparsely reported. For two regional study areas (Spain and Norway) RF was used to predict forest volume or aboveground biomass using remotely sensed auxiliary data obtained from multiple sensors. Additionally, the changes per unit area of these forest attributes were estimated using indirect and direct methods. Multiple inferential frameworks have attracted increased recent attention for estimating the variances...

Foehn wind events and associated mountain waves occurring on the northwest-facing side of the southern Appalachians have been identified as a source of strong low-level winds and adiabatic warming under certain synoptic patterns. Previous research relying on observations and mesoscale models has found that predicting the timing and magnitude of foehn events in the region represents a particular forecasting challenge (Gaffin, 2002a; 2002b; 2007; 2009).

Soils are the largest terrestrial pool of mercury (Hg), a neurotoxic pollutant. Pathways of Hg accumulation and loss in forest soils include throughfall, litterfall, soil gas fluxes, and leaching in soil solution, all of which will likely be altered under changing climate. We took advantage of three ongoing climate-change manipulation experiments at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest, New Hampshire, USA: a combined growing-season warming and winter freeze-thaw cycle experiment, a throughfall exclusion to mimic drought, and a simulated ice storm experiment to examine the response of the...

Soil maps provide essential information for forest management, and a recent transformation of the map making process through digital soil mapping (DSM) is providing much improved soil information compared to what was available through traditional mapping methods. The improvements include higher resolution soil data for greater mapping extents, and incorporating a wide range of environmental factors to predict soil classes and attributes, along with a better understanding of mapping uncertainties. In this chapter, we provide a brief introduction to the concepts and methods underlying the...