Treesearch

Introduction: Growing concerns about fire across the western United States, and commensurate emphasis on treating expansive areas over the next 2 decades, have created a need to develop tools for managers to assess management benefits and impacts across spatial scales. We modeled outcomes associated with two common forest management objectives: fire risk reduction (fire), and enhancing multiple resource benefits (ecosystem resilience). Method: We evaluated the compatibility of these two objectives across ca. 1-million ha in the central Sierra Nevada, California. The fire strategy focused...

The European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) aims to prevent deforestation-linked products from entering the EU market. This study assesses the potential impacts of the EUDR on global forest product markets using the FOrest Resource Outlook Model (FOROM), a partial equilibrium model of the global forest sector. We simulate two scenarios: the baseline EUDR, focused on commodity-driven deforestation and urbanization, and an extended EUDR+ scenario, which includes shifting agriculture. The results indicate that high-deforestation countries, such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia, are...

Ecosystem services are important for human well-being and for sustaining environmental quality objectives. Growing concern over extreme wildfire events in various watersheds necessitates understanding their impacts on regulating ecosystems services. Past studies have documented how wildfires regulate ecosystem services, but the distributional impacts of such ecosystem services across various human settlements (i.e. communities) remains understudied, despite renewed focus on how they are increasingly at risk from and being impacted by wildfires. We used the Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem...

Global climate change phenomena are amplified in Arctic regions, driving rapid changes in the biota. Here, we examine changes in plant community structure over more than 30 years at two sites in arctic Alaska, USA, Imnavait Creek and Toolik Lake, to understand long-term trends in tundra response to changing climate. Vegetation cover was sampled every 4–7 years on permanent 1 m2 plots spanning a 1 km2 grid using a point-frame. The vascular plant canopies progressively closed at both locations. Canopy cover, defined here as an encounter of a vascular plant above the ground surface, increased...

Forest ecosystems play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle, acting as substantial carbon sinks and offering pathways for climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emission offsetting and bioeconomic opportunities collectively referred to as Natural Climate Solutions (NCS). Over 100 forest carbon modeling experts, primarily from the US, were engaged through a Forest Carbon Modeling Group (FCMG) to identify and prioritize research needs, opportunities, and knowledge gaps for refining the application of NCS to meet a growing spectrum of GHG...

This study offers a discussion on how interconnected forest monitoring and reporting frameworks rely on different definitions and address different goals, using the United States (US) reporting as a case study. Objectives were to: 1) review US forest definitions and how they compare with FAO definitions; 2) evaluate implications for data analysis and interpretation; and 3) explore ongoing efforts and opportunities to develop objective, transparent, and useful definitions of forest degradation, primary forests, and forest expansion. Because of the vast size, complex forest land management...

As the realized experiences of wildfires threatening communities increase, the importance of proactive evacuation preparation and wildfire risk mitigation on private property to reduce the loss of lives and property is shaping wildfire policy and programs. To date, research has focused on pre-wildfire evacuation preparation and risk mitigation independently. This paper examines the substitutability or complementarity of these proactive risk-reducing actions. If mitigation and evacuation preparedness are substitutes, wildfire education programs may take a life-over-property approach....

Community wildfire readiness includes homeowner wildfire risk mitigation and wildfire evacuation preparedness. This report presents results from a household survey distributed to 725 households in West Vail, Colorado in 2022. Results indicate that West Vail survey respondents may not fully understand the risk of damage or property loss due to a wildfire and may benefit from further information about wildfire risk contributors - in general and specific to their property - as well as evacuation preparedness information. Among common sources of wildfire risk information, respondents rated...

Deliberation – the process of group discussion and consideration – has been increasingly integrated to valuation of ecosystem services. In an online stated preference survey on the Fanjing Mountain National Nature Reserve in the Southwestern China, we assessed participants' willingness to pay (WTP) for cultural services (non-material benefits gained through interacting with nature, including its ecological and geological elements and characteristics) before and after deliberation. However, among the initial participants, only a subset completed deliberation and the full survey. This...

Large wildfires, the dominant natural disturbance type in North American forests, can cause significant damage to human infrastructure. One well-known approach to reduce the threat of wildfires is the strategic removal of forest fuels in linear firebreaks that segment forest landscapes into distinct compartments. However, limited human and financial resources can make it difficult to plan compartmentalization effectively. In this study, we developed a simulation-optimization approach to assist with the planning of wildfire risk mitigation efforts in the Red Rock-Prairie Creek area of...