Treesearch

The Wildland Research Institute (WRi) at the University of Leeds (UK) came into being in October 2009. Its origins go back to a United Kingdom research councilfunded seminar series called Wilderness Britain? which ran between 1998 and 2000 and was coordinated from the University of Leeds. This opened up the wider debate on wilderness and rewilding in the UK and later joined with others to form the Wildland Network with support from the British Association of Nature Conservationists (BANC). The Wildland Network took the debate forward with a focus on the wildland and rewilding movement in...

The 50th Anniversary of the U.S. Wilderness Act is a cause for celebration, not least of which is the scientific use recognized in Section 4(b) of the act. This year also marks the 20th anniversary of publication of the International Journal of Wilderness (IJW). IJW plays a unique role in wilderness stewardship, science, and advocacy, providing a forum for presentation and discussion of important questions, challenges, and opportunities. But wilderness provides unique opportunities for science, and IJW provides an equally useful international venue for scientists interested in establishing...

Large eddy simulation (LES) based computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulators have obtained increasing attention in the wildland fire research community, as these tools allow the inclusion of important driving physics. However, due to the complexity of the models, individual aspects must be isolated and tested rigorously to ensure meaningful results. As wind is a driving force that can significantly dictate the behavior of a wildfire, the simulation of wind is studied in the context of a particular LES CFD model, the Wildland–urban interface Fire Dynamics Simulator (WFDS). As WFDS has...

Earth's surface is rapidly urbanizing, resulting in dramatic changes in the abundance, distribution and character of surface water features in urban landscapes. However, the scope and consequences of surface water redistribution at broad spatial scales are not well understood. We hypothesized that urbanization would lead to convergent surface water abundance and distribution: in other words, cities will gain or lose water such that they become more similar to each other than are their surrounding natural landscapes. Using a database of more than 1 million water bodies and 1 million km of...

Wildfires are gaining more attention every year as they burn more frequently, more intensely, and across larger landscapes. Generating timely estimates of forest resources within fire perimeters is important for land managers to quickly determine the impact of fi res on U.S. forests. The U.S. Forest Service’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program needs tools to produce these estimates in a timely matter. Small-area estimation methods were recently developed and applied to previous wildfires in Colorado. This paper illustrates how these methods were assimilated into an automated...

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is an ecologically important species in high-altitude areas of the western United States and Canada due to the habitat and food source it provides for Clark’s nutcrackers, red squirrels, grizzly bears, and other animals. Whitebark pine stands have recently experienced high mortality due to wildfire, white pine blister rust, and a mountain pine beetle outbreak, leading to questions about the species’ long-term viability. The purpose of our study is characterize the age- and size-class structure of whitebark pine at the landscape level, as well as identify...

Remotely sensed observations can provide unique perspective on how management and natural disturbance affect carbon stocks in forests. However, integration of these observations into formal decision support will rely upon improved uncertainty accounting. Monte Carlo (MC) simulations offer a practical, empirical method of accounting for potential remote sensing errors as maps are used as inputs in ecosystem carbon assessment. We present a generic approach for coordinating the MC alteration of map values so that specific levels of both pixel-level and map-wide systematic error may be...

Many countries do not yet have well-established national forest inventories, and among those that do, significant methodological differences exist, particularly in the estimation of standing forest biomass. Global space-based LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) from NASA’s now-completed ICESat mission provided consistent, high-quality measures of canopy height and density. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, together with the United States Forest Service, has coordinated an international effort to calibrate ICESat measurements with fi eld measurements of aboveground...

Water quality and flow is affected my many complex factors in the Interior Western U.S. While many studies focus on individual water parameters response to a limited number of changing conditions, little work looks at long term effects of diverse forest disturbances on a broader array of water quality and flow metrics. The U.S. Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis program (FIA) is responsible for inventorying status and trends in forested ecosystems nationwide. FIA is currently partnered with NASA and others to develop nationwide maps of forest disturbance annually using the...

In the current budget climate, the U.S. Forest Inventory and Analysis program is under increased pressure to do more with less. While reliance solely on field data under the current annual inventory system is a suitable solution when funding is adequate and stable, decreasing budgets and increasing need for timely information may necessitate solutions that can augment field data collection with remote sensing and forest projection models in a cost-effective way. There is a long, rich history of using remote sensing in forest inventory applications. As the role of remote sensing has...