Treesearch

Some of the most vulnerable ecosystems include subalpine forests where growing space declines with elevation and species distributions are defined by distinct climatic gradients and biotic interactions. Climate change is projected to be rapid and heightened in these habitats, highlighting the importance of genetic diversity and adaptive capacity of plant species that occupy them (Millar et al. 2007). The North American high elevation five-needle white pines (Fig. 1) define the forest-alpine ecotone in many mountain systems and provide watershed protection and wildlife habitat. They are...

Trends in population abundance can be challenging to quantify during range expansion and contraction, when there is spatial variation in trend, or the conservation area is large. We used genetic detection data from natural bear rubbing sites and spatial capture-recapture (SCR) modeling to estimate local density and population growth rates in a grizzly bear population in northwestern Montana, USA. We visited bear rubs to collect hair in 2004, 2009-2012 (3,579-4,802 rubs) and detected 249-355 individual bears each year. We estimated the finite annual population rate of change 2004-2012 was...

There is broad recognition that fire management in the United States must fundamentally change and depart from practices that have led to an over-emphasis on suppression and limited the presence of fire in forested ecosystems. In this paper, we look at competing problem definitions in US Forest Service policy for fire management, the presence of goal ambiguity, and how these factors can explain why changes in fire management have been elusive, despite policy change. We consider US Forest Service fire policies, performance incentives, and decision-making processes for two sides of the...

Prescribed fire is an important management tool on US federal lands that is not being applied at the necessary or desired levels. We investigated the role of policy barriers and opportunities for prescribed fire application on US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands in the western United States. We conducted 54 semi-structured interviews with federal and state land managers and air quality regulators, and with several non-federal partners. We found that lack of adequate capacity and funding were the most commonly cited barriers to increasing application of prescribed fire....

Methods that allow rapid and robust evaluation of plant invader impacts are needed to identify problematic species before they become too widespread to effectively manage. While observational data can be readily gathered to identify negative relationships between invading and native species, these patterns are not necessarily indicative of invader impact and may instead reflect the legacy of past conditions influencing invasibility. We augmented standard observational methods by using local-scale time-since-invasion information in conjunction with rapidly gathered plant abundance data to...

This research examines how trustworthy wildfire management agencies are perceived to be in five wildfire-prone communities. Trust was most often expressed in the context of agency abilities or competence (calculative trust), whereas distrust was framed in the context of intentions or the belief that the agency is not acting in the best interest of the community (relational trust). Five factors identified as closely tied to an individual’s trust in wildfire agencies are: communication from the agency; perceived relations among different management agencies, as well as between agencies and...

In this article, we empirically examine whether the relationship between risk aversion and self-reported risk mitigating behavior is similar to the relationship between risk aversion and an objective measure of risk mitigating behavior. Despite higher levels of risk mitigation in the self-reported measure relative to the objective measure, we find risk aversion is similarly correlated with both measures of wildfire risk mitigation. These results provide some confidence in the use of self-reported behaviors in examinations of risk preferences and risky behaviors, even if the self-reports...

Despite an increasingly ethnically and racially diverse population in the United States (U.S.), growing evidence indicates that minorities are underrepresented in national forest visitation. Many reasons for continuing underrepresentation have been examined, involving research reaching back multiple decades. In the current study, a random sample of residents (n = 1977) from four large metropolitan statistical areas in California was involved in a telephone survey about forest visitation. Analysis revealed a continuing pattern of inequities in lifetime visitation to a national forest, as...

This Special Issue addresses the intersections of outdoor recreation, nature-based tourism, and sustainability. Outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism provide essential benefits to individuals, communities, and society and thereby contribute to sustainability. Equitable provision of opportunities, cultural variations in desired experiences, barriers to outdoor recreation, and diverse perceptions of both nature and recreation add to the complexity in outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism service delivery. Outdoor recreation and nature-based tourism occur within a socioecological...

Forest landscapes generate 57 percent of runoff worldwide and supply water to more than 4 billion people (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, 2005). As the world population continues to increase, there is a strong need to understand how forest processes link together in a cascade to provide people with water services like hydropower, aquaculture, drinking water and flood protection (Carvalho- Santos, Honrado and Hein, 2014). Wildfire is a major disturbance affecting forested watersheds and the water they provide (Box 1) (Paton et al., 2015). Several regions have experienced shifts in wildfires...