Treesearch

Accurate fuel load and consumption predictions are important to estimate fire effects and air pollutant emissions. The FOFEM (First Order Fire Effects Model) is a commonly used model developed in the western United States to estimate fire effects such as fuel consumption, soil heating, air pollutant emissions, and tree mortality. However, the accuracy of the model in the eastern United States has not been well tested. As a result, managers are turning to locally collected data sets from eastern forests to improve the accuracy of FOFEM and other models. FOFEM lacks local fuel load and...

Restoration of hardwood-pine (Pinus L.) mixedwoods is an important man-agement goal in many pine plantations in the southern Cumberland Plateau in north-central Alabama, USA. Pine plantations have been relatively un-managed since initiation, and thus include a diversity of hardwoods developing in the understory. These unmanaged pine plantations have become increasingly vulnerable to insects, and management activities were initiated to facilitate transition towards hardwood-pine mixedwoods. We evaluated a combination of thinning and prescribed fire prescriptions in a randomized complete...

Georgia’s 24.7 million acres of forest are a diverse mix of hardwood and softwood tree species typical of the South. Hardwood forests account for 53 percent of the forested area versus 45 percent for softwood types, with balance in mixed forests. Georgia’s forest resources are considerable and increasing. The rate at which the State gained forest land acreage from converted agricultural land decreased until 2009 and after that time remained stable. The rate at which forest was lost to development decreased steadily since about 2007. There were 22.0 billion cubic feet of wood volume in...

The importance of knowledge transfer between researchers, policy makers and practitioners is widely recognized. However, barriers to knowledge transfer can make it difficult for practitioners to apply the results of scientific research. This paper describes a project that addressed barriers to knowledge transfer by involving wildfire management practitioners from three countries in developing a trust planning guide. The guide provides information about trust, factors that influence trust and actions that can be taken to build trust in the context of wildfire management. The researchers...

The Gulf-Atlantic Coastal Plain (GACP) physiographic region is an important agricultural production area within the southeastern U.S. that extends from Delaware in the Northeast to the Gulf Coast of Texas. The region consists mainly of low-elevation flat to rolling terrain with numerous streams, abundant rainfall, a complex coastline, and many wetlands. The GACP Long Term Agroecosystem Research (LTAR) site is representative of the Tifton-Vidalia Upland (TVU) physiographic subprovince which has relatively homogeneous geology, soils, parent materials, land use, agricultural management, and...

The Reynolds Creek Experimental Watershed (RCEW) was established by the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) in 1960 to investigate rangeland hydrology issues in the northwestern USA. The site, which is administered by the Northwest Watershed Research Center (NWRC) in Boise, Idaho, is representative of much of the region, with a 1000 m elevation range and associated climate and vegetation range.

Anticipating the response of small mammals to climate change requires knowledge of thermal conditions of their habitat during times of the day and year when individuals use them. We measured diurnal and seasonal temperatures of free air and of six habitat components for American pikas (Ochotona princeps) over five years at 37 sites in seven mountain ranges in the western Great Basin, United States. Talus matrices (subsurfaces) had low daily variances and, in the warm season, remained cool during the hottest times of the day relative to surfaces and free air. During winter, matrices were...

The purpose of this chapter is to explore drought as a hydrometeorological phenomenon and reflect broadly on the characteristics of drought that influence forests, rangelands, and streams. It is a synthesis of understanding about drought processes, hydrology, paleoclimatology, and historical climate variability, and how this understanding can help predict potential future droughts and their consequences to forests and rangelands. It describes alternative approaches for characterizing drought and highlights additional work that could inform projection and adaptation for future droughts.

Breeding bird communities in forests of the western Great Lakes region are among the most diverse in North America, but the forest environment in this region has changed dramatically during the past 150 years. To address concerns about loss of biodiversity due to ongoing forest harvesting and to better inform forest planning, researchers have systematically monitored forest birds in the region for more than two decades. This report summarizes forest bird data collected from 1995 through 2011 in four national forests of the western Great Lakes region (the Chequamegon and Nicolet in Wisconsin...

We display the influence of pre-European settlement fire on vegetation across Minnesota by harnessing the power of bearing trees as indicators of past fires on the landscape. Species and genera of trees used as bearing trees in Public Land Surveys were categorized as either pyrophilic (fire-adapted) or pyrophobic (fire-sensitive) and the percentage of pyrophilic trees was calculated and interpolated to create a map showing the inferred importance of fire. Ecological units at four spatial scales (province, section, subsection, and landtype association) were examined against our...