Treesearch

Climate change is substantially impacting earth’s biodiversity, with a massive number of affected species that are difficult to study comprehensively. An “indicator species” approach that generalizes species-specific climate change impacts to broader groups (e.g., ecological groups) could theoretically help overcome this challenge and streamline climate-smart conservation planning. We assessed this approach’s viability using four specialist amphibians (Ascaphus montanus, Dicamptodon copei, Plethodon idahoensis, and Plethodon vandykei), for which we expected convergent forecasted trajectorie...

Santa Ana winds are dry offshore downslope windstorms, commonly observed during autumn and winter across southwestern California in the United States. The accuracy of real-time Santa Ana wind forecasts is crucial for wildfire- related emergency management and decision-making. This research utilizes the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service’s diagnostic wind flow model WindNinja (WN) and evaluates 1) the accuracy of 10-m sustained wind speed from an operational coarse resolution mesoscale forecast model and 2) the relative accuracy of high spatial resolution WN downscaled simulations...

Reforestation is generally regarded as having the most substantial climate mitigation potential among a suite of available natural climate solutions which have focused almost exclusively on the benefits of carbon sequestration and storage. However, these reforestation studies have not accounted for the adverse warming impacts resulting from corresponding surface albedo change. A newly available dataset developed with albedo imagery from the Landsat 8 satellite analyzed at field plots from the United States (US) Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides non-soil carbon stocks and...

Rocky Mountain Research Station’s Wildfire Risk Management Science Team develops tools for wildland fire managers. Our cutting-edge technology, backed by state-of-the-art science informs decisions made by fire managers every day. For two decades, the Wildfire Risk Management Science Team has been investigating critical facets of the wildfire response system and creating decision-making support tools for fire planners and incident command teams. Our Team provides real-time data on risk management, fire response strategy, and likely effectiveness to the people who need it most - managers...

Genetic rescue, specifically translocation to facilitate gene flow among populations and reduce the effects of inbreeding, is an increasingly used approach in conservation. However, this approach comes with trade-offs, wherein gene flow may reduce fitness when populations have adaptive differentiation (i.e., outbreeding depression). A better understanding of the interaction between isolation, inbreeding, and adaptive divergence in key traits, such as life history traits, will help to inform genetic rescue efforts. Stream-dwelling salmonids, such as the westslope cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchu...

1. Climate change is expected to induce shifts in the composition, structure and functioning of Arctic tundra ecosystems. Increases in the frequency and severity of tundra fires have the potential to catalyse vegetation transitions with far-reaching local, regional and global consequences. 2. We propose that post-fire tundra recovery, coupled with climate change, may not necessarily lead to pre-fire conditions. Our hypothesis, based on surveys and literature, suggests two climate–fire driven trajectories. One trajectory results in increased woody vegetation under low fire frequency; the...

The process of fairly allocating limited recreation opportunities across, and within, a broad range of user groups presents a challenging task to recreation managers, planners, and policy makers. The practice of recreation allocation can be controversial. Recreationists share deep values toward access to high-quality recreation opportunities, and recreationists tend to examine decisions of recreation allocation with a serious level of scrutiny when a use limit is implemented. Despite the controversy that recreation allocation decisions can generate, research-based guidance to inform...

Objective: Digital representations of stream networks are integral components of spatial analyses to describe species distributions and habitat extents, but users should understand their strengths and weaknesses. Here, we used two resolutions of the publicly available and widely applied National Hydrography Dataset (NHD) with large fish and amphibian occurrence data sets to highlight patterns of habitat occupancy relative to availability as described by the NHD.Methods: Data sets consisting of 37,318 occurrences for 10 species were linked to NHD reaches, attributed with reach slope and...

The area burned in the western United States during the 2020 fire season was the greatest in the modern era. Here we show that the number of human‐caused fires in 2020 also was elevated, nearly 20% higher than the 1992-2019 average. Although anomalously dry conditions enabled ignitions to spread and contributed to record area burned, these conditions alone do not explain the surge in the number of human‐caused ignitions. We argue that behavioral shifts aimed at curtailing the spread of COVID‐19 altered human‐environment interactions to favor increased ignitions. For example, the number of...

Accounting for the effects of fire suppression and containment efforts has posed a challenge in wildfire modeling. Fire suppression is a complex phenomenon depending on factors such as resource availability, weather, terrain, and fire suppression priorities in a given place and time. Suppression is an influential factor in wildfire growth though, and should be considered in models. We developed a generalized model of fire containment by utilizing daily reports on size and percent containment of wildfires in the United States. We used this model to support wildfire risk analysis simulations...