Treesearch

Fire can have diverse effects on ecosystems, including direct effects through injury and mortality and indirect effects through changes to available resources within the environment. Changes in vegetation structure such as a decrease in canopy cover or an increase in herbaceous cover from prescribed fire can increase availability of preferred microhabitats for some species while simultaneously reducing preferred conditions for others. We examined the responses of herpetofaunal communities to prescribed fires in an oak/hickory forest in western Kentucky. Prescribed fires were applied twice...

Climate refugia are locations where decoupled climate processes enable species to persist despite unfavorable climate changes in surrounding landscapes. Despite theoretic bases and paleo-ecological evidence, refugia have not been widely characterized under modern conditions in mountain regions. Conifers in the Great Basin, USA, provide an opportunity to evaluate the potential of low-elevation ravine and riparian (LERR) contexts to function as climate refugia. We provide evidence for significantly higher than expected occurrence of limber pine (Pinus flexilis E. James) in LERR contexts...

The capacity of family owned forests to sustain ecological goods and services depends on the landscape context within which that forest occurs. For example, the expansion of a nearby urban area results in the loss of adjacent forest, which threatens the ability of the family forest to sustain interior forest habitat. Our objective was to assess the status and change of the landscape context of family forests across the conterminous United States, as measured by interior forest status and anthropogenic (urban and agricultural) interface zones. We combined circa 2005 forest inventory data...

Fire creates challenges and opportunities for wildlife through rapid destruction, modification and creation of habitat. Fire has spatially variable effects on landscapes; however, for species that benefit from the ephemeral resource patches created by fire, it is critical to understand characteristics of fires that promote postfire colonization and persistence and the spatial scales on which they operate. Using a model postfire specialist, the black‐backed woodpecker (Picoides arcticus), we examined how colonization and persistence varied across two spatial scales as a function of four...

Agroforestry can reduce risks and promote sustainable agricultural production under shifting climate and weather extremes by (1) reducing threats and enhancing agricultural landscape resiliency, (2) facilitating species movement to more favorable conditions, (3) sequestering carbon, and (4) reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Although agroforestry practices can provide these positive adaptation and mitigation services, they in turn can be vulnerable to the same forces. The design and management of agroforestry systems must therefore take into account how these systems can incorporate...

This study applied a time series evapotranspiration (ET) data derived from the remote sensing to evaluate Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT) model calibration, which is a unique method. The SWAT hydrologic model utilized monthly stream flow data from two US Geological Survey (USGS) stations within the Big Sunflower RiverWatershed (BSRW) in Northwestern, Mississippi. Surface energy balance algorithm for land (SEBAL), which utilized MODerate Resolution Imaging Spectro-radiometer (MODIS) to generate monthly ET time series data images were evaluated with the SWAT model. The SWAT hydrological...

Outdoor recreation is one of many important benefits provided by public lands. Data on recreational use are critical for informing management of recreation resources, however, managers often lack actionable information on visitor use for large protected areas that lack controlled access points. The purpose of this study is to explore the potential for social media data (e.g., geotagged images shared on Flickr and trip reports shared on a hiking forum) to provide land managers with useful measures of recreational use to dispersed areas, and to provide lessons learned from comparing several...

Although burned trees are the most visible damage following a wildfire, a forest’s soil can also be damaged. The heat generated by a wildfire can alter the soil’s physical properties and kill the fungi and bacteria that are responsible for nutrient cycling and other ecosystem services. What isn’t well understood is the extent of the heating within the soil and how quickly the soil recovers. In the Pringle Falls Experimental Forest in the Deschutes National Forest, researchers with the U.S. Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station, Oregon State University, and Kansas State Universit...

Hurricanes Irma and Maria struck Puerto Rico on the 6th and 20th of September 2017, respectively. These two powerful Cat 5 hurricanes severely defoliated forest canopy and deposited massive amounts of litterfall in the forests across the island. We established a 1-ha research plot in each of four forests (Guánica State Forest, Río Abajo State Forest, Guayama Research Area and Luquillo Experiment Forest) before September 2016, and had collected one full year data of litterfall production prior to the arrival of Hurricanes Irma and Maria. Hurricane-induced litterfall was collected within one...

This publication provides an overview of forest resources in South Dakota based on an inventory conducted by the USDA Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program at the Northern Research Station (NRS) in cooperation with the South Dakota Department of Agriculture, Resource Conservation and Forestry Division. Estimates are based on field data collected using the FIA annualized sample design and are updated yearly. Information about the national and regional FIA program is available at http://fia.fs.fed.us. For the 2017 inventory, the statewide base sample was augmented by a...