Treesearch

Marginal populations are expected to provide the frontiers for adaptation, evolution and range shifts of plant species under the anticipated climate change conditions. Marginal populations are predicted to show genetic divergence from central populations due to their isolation, and divergent natural selection and genetic drift operating therein. Marginal populations are also expected to have lower genetic diversity and effective population size (Ne) and higher genetic differentiation than central populations. We tested these hypotheses using eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) as a model...

Patterns of social interaction influence how knowledge is generated, communicated, and applied. Theories of social capital and organizational learning suggest that interactions within disciplinary or functional groups foster communication of knowledge, whereas interactions across groups foster generation of new knowledge. We used social network analysis to examine patterns of social interaction reported in survey data from scientists and managers who work on fish and fire issues. We found that few fish and fire scientists and managers interact with one another, suggesting low bridging...

The ecological effects of forest fires burning with high severity are long-lived and have the greatest impact on vegetation successional trajectories, as compared to low-to-moderate severity fires. The primary drivers of high severity fire are unclear, but it has been hypothesized that wind-driven, large fire-growth days play a significant role, particularly on large fires in forested ecosystems. Here, we examined the relative proportion of classified burn severity for individual daily areas burned that occurred during 42 large forest fires in central Idaho and western Montana from 2005 to...

Forest resources supply a wide range of environmental services like mitigation of increasing levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2). As climate is changing, forest managers have added pressure to obtain forest resources by following stand management alternatives that are biologically sustainable and economically profitable. The goal of this study is to project the effect of typical forest management actions on forest C levels, given a changing climate, in the Moscow Mountain area of north-central Idaho, USA. Harvest and prescribed fire management treatments followed by plantings of one...

Vegetation structure quantified by light detection and ranging (LiDAR) can improve understanding of wildlife occupancy and species-richness patterns. However, there is often a time lag between the collection of LiDAR data and wildlife data. We investigated whether a time lag between the LiDAR acquisition and field-data acquisition affected mapped wildlife distributions ranging from an individual species distribution to total avian species richness in a conifer forest. We collected bird and LiDAR data in 2009 across a 20,000 ha forest in northern Idaho. Using the 2009 LiDAR data, we...

Using remotely-sensed metrics to identify regions containing high animal diversity and/or specific animal species or guilds can help prioritize forest management and conservation objectives across actively managed landscapes. We predicted avian species richness in two mixed conifer forests, Moscow Mountain and Slate Creek, containing different management contexts and located in north-central Idaho. We utilized general linear models and an AIC model selection approach to examine the relative importance of a wide range of remotely-sensed ecological variables, including LiDAR-derived metrics...

Policymakers seek ways to encourage fuel reduction among private forest landowners to augment similar efforts on federal and state lands. Motivating landowners to contribute to landscape-level wildfire protection requires an understanding of factors that underlie landowner behaviour regarding wildfire. We developed a conceptual framework describing landowners’ propensity to conduct fuel reduction as a function of objective and subjective factors relating to wildfire risk. We tested our conceptual framework using probit analysis of empirical data from a survey of non-industrial private...

The United States Environmental Protection Agency (U.S. EPA) is working with its regional offices, states, tribes, river basin commissions and other entities to establish Regional Monitoring Networks (RMNs) for freshwater wadeable streams. To the extent possible, uninterrupted, biological, temperature and hydrologic data will be collected on an ongoing basis at RMN sites, which are primarily located on smaller, minimally disturbed forested streams. The primary purpose of this document is to provide guidance on how to collect accurate, year-round temperature and hydrologic data at ungaged...

Resin ducts (RDs) are features present in most conifer species as defence structures against pests and pathogens; however, little is known about RD expression in trees following fire injury. This study investigates changes in RD size and density in fire scars of Douglas fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) and western larch (Larix occidentalis) as a means to evaluate the ecophysiological significance of traumatic resinosis for tree defence and survival.

Fusiform rust resistance can involve gene-for-gene interactions where resistance (Fr) genes in the host interact with corresponding avirulence genes in the pathogen, Cronartium quercuum f.sp. fusiforme (Cqf). Here, we identify trees with Fr genes in a loblolly pine population derived from a complex mating design challenged with two Cqf inocula (one gall and 10 gall mixtures). We used single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotypes at sufficient density to ensure linkage between segregating markers and Fr genes identifying SNPs that explained high proportions of variance in disease incidence...