Treesearch

Given the need to conserve forest biodiversity and produce forest products, President Clinton’s vision for the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP, or Plan) was that it would provide “a balanced and comprehensive strategy for the conservation and management of forest ecosystems, while maximizing economic and social benefits from forests” (USDA and USDI 1994: E-1). The Plan was expected to support the production of a predictable, sustainable level of timber and nontimber resources from federal forests to contribute to the stability of local and regional economies over the long term (Charnley et al....

UPDATE (5/7/2021): We found an error in the RdNBR equation in the Earth Engine script originally distributed with this paper. The code has been updated, but please be aware of this issue if you used a previous version of the script. This error does not change the overall message of the paper: that producing severity metrics using the "mean compositing" approach is an improvement over paired-scene assessments and that using Earth Engine makes the process relatively fast and easy. dNBR and RBR are not affected. Landsat-based fire severity datasets are an invaluable resource for monitoring...

Climate change is expected to alter the composition, structure, and function of forested ecosystems in the United States (Vose et al. 2012). Increases in atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (e.g., carbon dioxide [CO2]) and temperature, as well as altered precipitation and disturbance regimes (e.g., fire, insects, pathogens, and windstorms), are expected to have profound effects on biodiversity, socioeconomics, and the delivery of ecosystem services within the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP, or Plan) area over the next century (Dale et al. 2001, Franklin et al. 1991). The ecological...

Conservation planning requires the prioritization of a subset of taxa and geographical locations to focus monitoring and management efforts. Integration of the threats and opportunities posed by climate change often relies on predictions from species distribution models, particularly for assessments of vulnerability or invasion risk for multiple taxa. We evaluated whether species distribution models could reliably rank changes in species range size under climate and land use change.

The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) was listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act in 1990 (USFWS 1990). Providing adequate amounts of suitable forest cover to sustain the subspecies was a major component of the first recovery plan for northern spotted owls (USFWS 1992) and a driver in the basic reserve design and old-forest restoration under the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP, or Plan) (USDA and USDI 1994). The reserve design included large contiguous blocks of late-successional forest, which was expected to be sufficient to provide habitat for many interacting...

In this chapter, we describe expectations of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP, or Plan) and review recent science on the ecology and status of the marbled murrelet (Brachyramphus marmoratus), with an emphasis on the portion of the species’ range that falls within the Plan area. The conservation strategy embodied in the NWFP evolved from designation and protection of a large number of relatively small management areas to an approach based primarily on the designation of fewer large areas, each designed to conserve functioning late-successional and old-growth ecosystems. These were intended...

Mastication is the process of chipping or shredding components of the tree canopy or above-ground vegetation to reduce the canopy, alter fire spread rates, and reduce crown fire potential. Mastication as a fuel treatment, either alone or in combination with prescribed fire, has been the subject of much research. This research has shown that modeling expected fire behavior in these fuels is challenging. Masticated materials from different ecosystems are unique and may react differently to fire. Therefore, there are no standard guidelines to help managers understand the potential fire...

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