Treesearch

Timber harvesting operations generate brush and other vegetative debris, which often has no marketable value. In many western U.S. forests, these materials represent a fire hazard and a potential threat to forest health and must be removed or burned for disposal. Currently, there is no established, consistent method to estimate brush disposal production rates in the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Region, which spans Montana and parts of Washington, Idaho, South Dakota, and North Dakota. Production rates developed specifically for one Northern Region national forest over a decade ago are...

Soil functions that control plant resource availability can be altered by management activities such as increased organic matter (OM) removal and soil compaction during forest harvesting. The Long Term Soil Productivity study was established to evaluate how these practices influence soil and site productivity using experimental treatments that span a range of forest types and soil conditions at sites across North America. Here we report on the effects of these treatments on soil properties after 20 years at three of the oldest sites in the study. The sites all are located in aspen (Populous...

Silvopasture is the intentional combination of trees, forage, and livestock on a parcel of land to optimize multiple outputs and has been shown to have benefits for production in various parts of the world. There is strong interest in silvopasture in the Southern United States, likely driven by multiple motivations. However, silvopasture practices have not been adopted or studies widely in Virginia or surrounding states, and lack of familiarity and information is a key hurdle to adoption. Potential adopters need research in order to make sound establishment and management decisions, but...

Conservation of imperiled species often demands addressing a complex suite of threats that undermine species viability. Regulatory approaches, such as the US Endangered Species Act (1973), tend to focus on anthropogenic threats through adoption of policies and regulatory mechanisms. However, persistent ecosystem-based threats, such as invasive species and altered disturbance regimes, remain critical issues for most at-risk species considered to be conservation-reliant. We describe an approach for addressing persistent ecosystem threats to at-risk species based on ecological resilience and...

Sagebrush steppe ecosystems in the United States currently (2016) occur on only about one-half of their historical land area because of changes in land use, urban growth, and degradation of land, including invasions of non-native plants. The existence of many animal species depends on the existence of sagebrush steppe habitat. The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) depends on large landscapes of intact habitat of sagebrush and perennial grasses for their existence. In addition, other sagebrush obligate animals have similar requirements and restoration of landscapes for greater...

In burned forestlands, fire scar wounds commonly occur on tree stems as a result of cambial heating. In hardwood forests in particular, wounding can lead to stem decay with the extent of decay being related to scar size and exposure time. Therefore, wound closure rates are important to understand in the context of fire management such that allowing sufficient time for wound closure to occur between fires would enhance wood quality. Conversely, in the context of wildlife management, understanding wound closure rates would improve fire prescriptions needed for creating basal tree cavities as...

Residents in the wildland-urban interface can play an important role in reducing wildfires’ negative effects by performing wildfire risk mitigation on their properties. This report offers insight into the wildfire risk mitigation activities and related considerations such as attitudes, experiences, and concern about wildfire, for residents of the Telluride Fire Protection District of San Miguel County, Colorado. Data come from a social survey and parcel-level rapid wildfire risk assessments administered by the West Region Wildfire Council. Results are presented both in graphical form and...

The U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program collects sample plot data on all forest ownerships across the United States. FIA's primary objective is to determine the extent, condition, volume, growth, and use of trees on the Nation's forest land through a comprehensive inventory and analysis of the Nation's forest resources. The FIA program strives for transparency by making the methods and results of the inventory and analysis available to the public. The standard for distributing FIA data is the FIADatabase (FIADB). FIADB data for individual states can be downloaded...

Citizen science has been gaining popularity in ecological research and resource management in general and in urban forestry specifically. As municipalities and nonprofits engage volunteers in tree data collection, it is critical to understand data quality. We investigated observation error by comparing street tree data collected by experts to data collected by less experienced field crews in Lombard, IL; Grand Rapids, MI; Philadelphia, PA; and Malmö, Sweden. Participants occasionally missed trees (1.2%) or counted extra trees (1.0%). Participants were approximately 90% consistent with...

This resource update provides an overview of forest resource attributes for Kentucky based on an annual inventory conducted by the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program at the Southern Research Station of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture in cooperation with the Kentucky Department of Natural Resources Division of Forestry. These estimates, along with Web-posted supplemental tables, will be updated annually. For more information regarding past inventory reports for Kentucky, inventory program information, field sampling methodology, and estimation procedures, please...