Treesearch

A useful question for managers to ask is: why do we care about understanding fire’s ecological processes? At a theoretical level, knowledge itself may be the goal. However, at a more practical level, funding and research interest tends to reflect a desire to understand how to manipulate ecological processes to favor one or several preferred management outcomes. Although nature is indifferent about whether fire leads to regrowth of existing species or to wholesale change to a different vegetation type, humans usually favor one outcome over another. Which outcomes are viewed as more or less...

Every year worldwide some extraordinary wildfires occur, overwhelming suppression capabilities, causing substantial damages, and often resulting in fatalities. Given their increasing frequency, there is a debate about how to address these wildfires with significant social impacts, but there is no agreement upon terminology to describe them. The concept of extreme wildfire event (EWE) has emerged to bring some coherence on this kind of events. It is increasingly used, often as a synonym of other terms related to wildfires of high intensity and size, but its definition remains elusive. The...

Identifying units of conservation of aquatic species is fundamental to informed natural resources science and management. We used a combination of mitochondrial and nuclear molecular methods to identify potential units of conservation of Westslope Cutthroat Trout Oncorhynchus clarkii lewisi, a taxon native to montane river basins of the northwestern United States and southwestern Canada. Mitogenomic sequencing identified two major lineages composed of nine monophyletic clades, and a well-supported subclade within one of these, largely delineated by river basins. Analyses of microsatellites...

Pyrolysis of intact wildland fuels in the southern United States is being measured at bench, wind tunnel, and field scales as part of a larger research project to measure and model pyrolysis of wildland fuels to improve models used to predict prescribed fire behavior. Traditional pyrolysis experiments typically use dried, ground samples in either an inert or oxidizing environment subject to uniform heating and heat transfer. Fletcher and others are presenting results of pyrolysis experiments using a flat-flame burner to heat intact foliage from 14 species of plants native to the southern...

Small- to mid-sized forest carnivores, also known as mesocarnivores, are an important part of the animal community within national forests. Many forest mesocarnivores are of conservation concern and are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), have been petitioned for listing under the ESA multiple times, or have designations within the Forest Service that warrant consideration in decisions about planning, projects, or restoration. Mesocarnivores also receive heightened public attention and, as a result, are frequently the center of lawsuits brought...

A patchwork of disjunct lidar collections is rapidly developing across the USA, often acquired with different acquisition goals and parameters and without field data for forest inventory. Airborne lidar and coincident field data have been used to estimate forest attributes across individual lidar extents, where forest measurements are collected using project-specific inventory designs. This research explores predicting forest attributes at locations not represented in the training data by combining lidar and field measurements from ecologically similar forests. Using field measurements...

This case study was developed as part of a larger, interdisciplinary research project to assess the social, hydrological, and ecological effects of beaver-related watershed restoration approaches in rangeland streams of the Western United States. It is one of five case studies being undertaken to investigate the social context of beaver-related restoration in western rangelands. The Scott River basin in northern California is the first place in the state where watershed restoration using beaver dam analogues (BDAs, instream post and vegetation-weave structures that mimic natural beaver...

The development of electronic-nose (e-nose) technologies for disease diagnostics was initiated in the biomedical field for detection of biotic (microbial) causes of human diseases during the mid-1980s. The use of e-nose devices for disease-diagnostic applications subsequently was extended to plant and animal hosts through the invention of new gas-sensing instrument types and disease-detection methods with sensor arrays developed and adapted for additional host types and chemical classes of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) closely associated with individual diseases. Considerable progress...

This report presents a summary of the most recent Forest Inventory and Analysis data of Idaho’s forests based on field data collected between 2006 and 2015. The report includes descriptive highlights and tables of area, numbers of trees, biomass, volume, growth, mortality, and removals. Most sections and tables are organized by forest type or forest-type group, tree species group, diameter class, or owner group. Results show that Idaho’s forest land covers 21.6 million acres, of which 3 million acres (14 percent) are privately owned, and another 16.3 million acres (76 percent) are administe...

National forest planning and management traditionally have involved addressing a broad spectrum of natural resource issues and ecological conditions to comply with forest management regulations and policies. In 2012, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service issued a new forest planning rule requiring that national forests and grasslands identify and evaluate information on the ecosystem services provided by plan areas from which people benefit as part of the plan assessment phase of plan revision. Specifically, planning teams are directed now to identify “key” ecosystem services...