Treesearch

Selecting the geographic origin - the provenance - of seed is a key decision in restoration. The last decade has seen a vigorous debate on whether to use local or nonlocal seed. The use of local seed has been the preferred approach because it is expected to maintain local adaptation and avoid deleterious population effects (e.g., maladaptation and outbreeding depression). However, the impacts of habitat fragmentation and climate change on plant populations have driven the debate on whether the local-is-best standard needs changing. This debate has largely been theoretical in nature, which...

Increasing the supply of native wildflower seed is essential for restoring burned and degraded wildlands in the Intermountain West. Limitations to wildland seed collection necessitate development of effective cultural practices to improve reliability of seed production in agricultural fields. Irrigation trials were conducted over multiple years for three perennial species in the Fabaceae family [Dalea ornata (Douglas ex Hook.) Eaton & J. Wright, Dalea searlsiae (A. Gray) Barneby, and Astragalus filipes Torr. ex A. Gray]. Each of the three species was grown at the Oregon State University...

Forest managers are often tasked with balancing opposing objectives, such as altering forest structure and conserving forest-dwelling animals. Consequently, to develop holistic strategies managers require information on how forest manipulations influence species of conservation concern, particularly those that are federally threatened or endangered. Here, we characterized how differing silvicultural treatments (n=1,293 - forest thinnings; removal of small trees, selection cuts; trees harvested in small patches, and regeneration cuts; clearcuts of nearly all trees) influenced the resource...

Landscape scale restoration is a common management intervention used around the world to combat ecological degradation. For wilderness managers in the United States, the decision to intervene is complicated by the Wilderness Act’s legal mandate to preserve wilderness character and demonstrate managerial restraint (16 U.S.C. § 1131-1136). We assessed the frequency and type of management interventions, specifically actions to manage ecosystems, that have occurred in the National Wilderness Preservation System between 2011 and 2015, including the specific type of intervention, the methods...

Managers require quantitative yet tractable tools that identify areas for restoration yielding effective benefits for targeted wildlife species and the ecosystems they inhabit. As a contemporary example of high national significance for conservation, the persistence of Greater Sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in the Great Basin is compromised by strongly interacting stressors of conifer expansion, annual grass invasion, and more frequent wildfires occurring in sagebrush ecosystems. Associated restoration treatments to a sagebrush-dominated state are often costly and may yield...

A cut-to-length (CTL) harvest system using a harvester and forwarder has been recently introduced in northern California (USA) for thinning young (<25 years old) redwood forests (Sequoia sempervirens (Lamb. ex D. Don) Endl.). However, the severity of CTL damage to residual trees in this forest type are unknown. The goals of this study were to (1) determine the location, size, and number of scars resulting from CTL harvesting and (2) compare scar size differences between redwood clumps and individual trees in two units. Most scars occurred on trees located near the forwarding trails. Wider...

For lek-breeding birds, lek attendance can be correlated with mating success. Variability in lek attendance could confound interpretation of male reproductive effort and complicate the use of lek counts as an index to monitor abundance. We assessed the daily probability of male Sage Grouse Centrocercus urophasianus lek attendance and explored implications of attendance on lek counts. We fitted 145 males with global positioning system (GPS) transmitters over 4 years in Carbon County, Wyoming. We evaluated influences of lek size and topography, date, weather, and bird characteristics such as...

Structurally diverse forests provide resilience to an array of disturbances and are a mainstay of multiple-resource management. Silviculture based on natural disturbance can increase structural heterogeneity while providing other ecological and economic benefits. One useful silvicultural tool for promoting structural heterogeneity is retention harvesting, whereby a portion of forest stands are left unlogged, transitioning even-aged stands to multi-aged. We report stand and tree dynamics 11 years after retention harvest in a central Montana Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine forest with evidence...

This resource update provides an overview of timber product output (TPO) and use in Minnesota based on questionnaires designed to determine the size and composition of the State's primary wood-using industry, its use of roundwood and its generation and disposition of wood residues. This study was a cooperative effort between the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MN-DNR) and the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) unit at the Northern Research Station (NRS) of the USDA Forest Service. MN-DNR surveyed primary wood-using mills and FIA processed and analyzed the survey responses. This...

This resource update provides an overview of timber product output (TPO) and use in South Dakota based on questionnaires designed to determine the size and composition of the State's primary wood-using industry, its use of roundwood, and its generation and disposition of wood residues. This study was a cooperative effort between the South Dakota Department of Agriculture, Resource Conservation and Forestry Division (SDRCF) and the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) unit at the Northern Research Station (NRS) of the USDA Forest Service. SDRCF surveyed primary wood-using mills and FIA...