Treesearch

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service, Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program provides this resource update yearly as an overview of forest resources in Oregon. These estimates are derived from field data collected across a systematic network of fixed-radius forest monitoring plots located on both public and private land. New updates are provided annually as a subset of plots within the State are remeasured. Each year, field crews visit and measure a subset of all FIA plots across the entire State (the size of the subset varies by State and year). Combining all the...

We present the first infrasound analyses of a rangeland fire and demonstrate infrasound's potential in monitoring wildland fires. We recorded a prescribed fire in sagebrush steppe in cool, moist conditions, using eight infrasound arrays of diverse size (3–44 sensors, 10–200 m width) and distance (0–20 km), including four arrays inside the burn area. Infrasound arrays within 2 km of fires detected coherent infrasound between 1 and 10 Hz, both during active ignitions and also while existing fires continued burning during breaks in ignitions. During periods of active ignitions, the direction...

CONTEXT: Diversification of agricultural production has been proposed to address interrelated social, ecological, and economic challenges. However, definitions of agricultural diversification vary, and there has been negligible research documenting what farmers consider to be diversification. A shared understanding of agricultural diversification is needed to create common goals and support policies and programs that incorporate the vision of the agriculture community.OBJECTIVE: We examine the meaning of agricultural diversification according to agricultural stakeholders with a focus on...

The invasive emerald ash borer (Agrilus planipennis) is a threat to all North American ash (genus Fraxinus) trees, but wetland ecosystems dominated by black ash (F. nigra) are of particular concern to land managers. The rapid and extensive death of black ash on the landscape causes unprecedented ecological and hydrological impacts to cascade through the ecosystem. A strategy to combat such impacts and maintain these wetlands as forested is to underplant these stands with seedlings of alternative species that are capable of maturing into canopy trees. This study planted seedlings of seven...

Whole-tree harvesting, in which the trunk of the tree and woody residues from the canopy and branches are removed from the site and used to make various products, is a common harvesting practice in the northeastern United States. Concerns have arisen, however, around the long-term impact of removing this material from the forest, especially in clearcuts where all trees are harvested, as doing so could reduce soil nutrient availability and carbon. These concerns are especially relevant for poorly drained, conifer-dominated sites, which tend to be nutrient poor.One long-term study at the...

Rewetting shows promise for mitigating carbon loss from drained peatlands. However, knowledge gaps remain in rewetting impacts on gaseous carbon fluxes and factors affecting rewetting success, especially in Minnesota and the Upper Midwest, United States, despite abundant degraded peatlands presenting restoration opportunities.This study fills knowledge gaps in carbon flux from partially drained and rewetted Minnesota peatlands and quantifies environmental drivers of gaseous carbon fluxes to better estimate peatland carbon flux throughout Minnesota and the region.We paired chamber‐based...

Fuel breaks are linear strips of land along which vegetation is cleared or thinned - constructed along ridgelines, roads, and other strategic places - to give firefighters a safer, higher chance to slow or steer a fire. Often described as “speed bumps” for wildfires, fuel breaks rarely stop fire spread on their own, but they do give crews critical anchor points for building fireline, setting backfires, or safely applying water and retardant. They have been used since the 1960s across many landscapes.

Protected areas are considered an antidote to biodiversity loss, but have not protected all biodiversity equally. Freshwater biodiversity has declined globally by 84 percent since 1970 - more than twice the rate of marine and terrestrial species. Legacy effects from logging, mining, livestock grazing, dams, and fish stocking have affected freshwater ecosystems across the landscape including federally-protected areas.

From 2021 to 2023, researchers conducted inventories to assess, survey, and describe vegetation on 99 sites in Puerto Rico. Inventory sites comprise several ecological succession stages (or vegetation community phases) and land uses across the island, encompassing mature forests, restored forests, secondary forests, shrublands, pioneers, abandoned tillage crops, managed grasslands, abandoned grasslands, and abandoned horticulture grounds. These were located among the municipalities of Cabo Rojo, Caguas, Canóvanas, Fajardo, Jayuya, Lajas, Loíza, Luquillo, Manatí, Río Grande, Santa Isabel,...

Sensitivity to wind behaviors has been observed in marginal fire behavior in the field and using high-complexity fire models. Here we use the coupled atmospheric hydrodynamic-fire behavior model FIRETEC to simulate a marginal fire and develop 2028 one-dimensional time series from the temperature of the solid fuel, the convective heat transfer, the magnitude of the horizontal winds, and the vertical wind velocity on and around the leading edge of the fireline. We test each of these time series for chaotic signals using the Chaos 0-1 test that distinguishes between chaotic and non-chaotic...