Treesearch

Wildfire regimes are changing rapidly with widespread increase in the intensity, frequency, and duration of fire activity, especially in the western United States. Limited studies explore the impacts of wildfires on aquatic taxa and few focus on lentic habitats that are essential for amphibians, many of which are of conservation concern. We capitalized on existing pre-fire surveys for anuran species and resurveyed a random subset of wetlands across a gradient of soil burn severity to investigate the short-term effects of wildfire on a relict population of wood frogs in the southern Rocky...

Severe wildfires often increase nitrogen (N) losses from burned forests which can impact downstream water quality, water treatability, and aquatic habitat. Woody mulch is commonly applied to mitigate post-fire soil erosion and enhance revegetation, but it is also a source of labile carbon (C) that can stimulate microbial immobilization and limit N release to soil and streams. The objective of our study was to evaluate whether woody mulch application could reduce N losses from soils and export from watersheds affected by the 2020 Cameron Peak fire in Northern Colorado, USA. Our assessment...

Soil carbon is an important component of the terrestrial carbon cycle and could be augmented through improved soil management to mitigate climate change. However, data gaps for numerous regions and a lack of understanding of the heterogeneity of biogeochemical processes across diverse soil landscapes hinder the development of large-scale representations of soil organic matter (SOM) dynamics. In this Perspective, we outline how understanding soil formation processes and complexity at the landscape scale can inform predictions of soil organic matter (SOM) cycling and soil carbon sequestration...

Effective wildfire prevention includes actions to deliberately target different wildfire causes. However, the cause of an increasing number of wildfires is unknown, hindering targeted prevention efforts. We developed a machine learning model of wildfire ignition cause across the western United States on the basis of physical, biological, social, and management attributes associated with wildfires. Trained on wildfires from 1992 to 2020 with 12 known causes, the overall accuracy of our model exceeded 70% when applied to out‐of-sample test data. Our model more accurately separated wildfires...

Eastern spruce-fir forests, characterized by red spruce (Picea rubens) and balsam fir (Abies balsamea), cover millions of acres in the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. Many spruce-fir forests are managed for wood production and wildlife habitat. To best manage these forests for the resources they provide, it is important to determine the stocking, that is, the size and number of trees in a given stand. The stocking provides different levels of growth and canopy closure, which informs managers when and how to thin the stand. Researchers from the U.S. Department of...

BackgroundThe increasing extent and severity of wildfires in the western USA poses a significant challenge to managers and to society. Forest thinning and prescribed fire treatments reduce fire hazard and improve resilience to climatic stressors. However, expanding the pace and scale of forest management is hampered, in part, by limited understanding and exposure of interested parties and the public to fuel reduction treatments. Virtual tour applications provide an opportunity to extend tours of treatment demonstration areas to anyone with a computer and internet connection. Yet there is...

Increased frequency and intensity of storms, sea level rise, and warming temperatures are affecting forests along the eastern coast of the United States. However, we lack a clear understanding of how the structure of coastal forests is being altered by climate change drivers. Here, we used data from the Forest Inventory and Analysis program of the US Forest Service to examine structure and biomass change in forests along the mid-Atlantic, Southeastern, and Gulf coasts of the US. We selected plots that have been resampled at low (5 m) and mid (30–50 m) elevations in coastal areas of states...

Catastrophic earthquakes induce significant, enduring vegetation disturbances through extensive landslides and geomorphological alterations. The post-earthquake vegetation recovery hinges on the disturbance severity, climatic variability, and strategic human intervention, yet understanding of these critical processes and their influences on eco-hydrological functions at the landscape level remains limited. This study aims to quantify the earthquake's impacts on vegetation structure and eco-hydrological functions and to elucidate the recovery mechanisms driven by climate variability and...

Accurate positioning in the forest (e.g., less than 1–2 m horizontal error) is needed to leverage the potential of high-resolution auxiliary data sources such as airborne or satellite imagery, lidar, and photogrammetric heights used in forest monitoring. Unfortunately, typical short duration occupations in the forest with budget Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS; GPS is the American constellation) receivers are generally inaccurate (horizontal errors >5–20 m). This study demonstrates that accurate GNSS positioning is feasible beneath 40 to 60 m-tall closed-canopy conifer forests of...

Air leakage is one of the critical moisture sources that may compromise the structural integrity and air quality of wood-frame buildings. The present study investigates air leakage through typical North American oriented strand board (OSB) sheathing using a one-of-a-kind analytical chamber, the CARWASh, which is designed to generate temperature- and humidity-controlled outdoor and indoor conditions for the evaluation of water management performance and moisture dynamics of exterior wall assemblies. We establish a baseline estimate for air leakage through OSB sheathing in full-scale...