Treesearch

This chapter summarizes key findings and offers take-home messages of the Future Forest Webinar Series with regard to resource management planning, analyses, and project design. In the wake of the mountain pine beetle (MPB) epidemic, resource managers are especially concerned with developing more resilient forests, providing for the sustainability of wildlife and fish habitat, public safety, and managing our water resources. We attempted to provide information to support these management goals via the series of webinars. More details on the findings of each webinar are presented in the...

Citizens, government officials, and natural resource managers are greatly concerned about potential impacts of the mountain pine beetle (MPB) epidemic on fire hazards and risk. Some mountain towns are surrounded by dead and dying trees. In the Rocky Mountain Region of the Forest Service, the MPB epidemic threatens over 250,000 acres of the wildland-urban interface (WUI; USDA Forest Service 2011). This post-epidemic landscape also poses hazards for firefighter safety due to heavy fuel loads and unpredictable fire behavior. Abundant snags are especially dangerous for firefighters working in...

More than 23 million acres of lodgepole pine forests across the western U.S. have experienced overstory mortality following the recent mountain pine beetle (MPB) epidemic (USDA Forest Service 2013). Unknowns regarding the immediate and long-term consequences of the epidemic challenge the ability of managers to make informed decisions aimed at sustaining forest health and delivery of ecosystem services. There is a large body of research regarding the recovery of lodgepole pine forest following fire and logging; however, the trajectory of stand development in beetle-killed forests is poorly...

Wildlife biologists must balance a diverse array of ecological and social considerations in managing species and habitats. The challenges of managing species and habitats in dynamic landscapes are influenced by diverse factors, including natural disturbances, vegetation development, and anthropogenic-mediated changes, such as climate change, management activities, and land use. Mountain pine beetles (MPBs) can be viewed as an ecosystem engineer - a species that both directly and indirectly shapes landscapes by altering the composition, structure, and function of ecosystems. Although native...

Healthy forest ecosystems provide many goods and services that are vital to human well-being. When forest ecosystems are impacted by disturbances, such as the widespread mountain pine beetle (MPB) epidemic, the services provided by these ecosystems are also affected. Likewise, management in response to large-scale forest disturbances impacts both the natural and human environment. These management actions are costly in terms of the amount of taxpayer dollars required to carry them out and in terms of their opportunity costs, especially in areas lacking economically-viable uses of beetle-kil...

Mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreaks have the potential for prolonged impacts on the delivery of clean water from infested subalpine watersheds throughout the West. Sixty-five percent of the West’s water supply originates on forested land (Brown and others 2008), much of which has been affected by an unprecedented MPB epidemic over the past decade. Some lodgepole pine stands in Colorado have lost more than 70 percent of their basal area following the MPB epidemic (Collins and others 2012). The death of pine trees leads to increased availability of light, water, and nutrients for residual...

Because elevated N loading can impair both terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, understanding the abiotic and biotic controls over retention and export of dissolved inorganic N (DIN) is crucial. Long-term research has been conducted on experimental watersheds at two U.S. Forest Service experimental forests in the Appalachian region: Fernow Experimental Forest (FEF) in West Virginia and Coweeta Hydrologic Laboratory (CHL) in North Carolina. While similar in vegetation and research history, FEF and CHL differ in climate, historic DIN deposition, and soils. We evaluated long-term patterns of...

Knowledge of tree age-size relationships is essential towards evaluating the sustainability of harvest regulations that include minimum diameter cutting limits and fixed-length cutting cycles. Although many tropical trees form annual growth rings and can be aged from discs or cores, destructive sampling is not always an option for valuable or threatened species. We used an individual-based population model developed for big-leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla, Meliaceae) in southeast Amazonia, Brazil to simulate stem age-size relationships and examine forest management implications of...

When the emerald ash borer (EAB) was discovered near Detroit, Michigan in July 2002, very little was known about it other than the fact that it was killing large numbers of ash trees throughout a widespread area in southeast Michigan (Poland and McCullough 2006). Ash mortality in the area had been noted for a few years, but was attributed to ash decline until damage and symptoms including galleries and exit holes became so prevalent that it was clear the beetle damage was not secondary but was in fact the causative agent of mortality. The beetle was identified by Eduard Jendek as Agrilus...

Since its accidental introduction near Detroit, Michigan, in the mid-1990s, emerald ash borer (EAB) has rapidly spread through much of the U.S. and adjacent Canada, leaving millions of dead ash trees in Midwestern states (4,11). Unfortunately, EAB attacks trees as small as an inch in stem diameter and it attacks all five ash species native to the region - white, green, black, pumpkin, and blue. Nearly 100% of the trees attacked by the beetle eventually die (5, but see 10). Yearly monitoring of ash forest sites across Ohio began in 2005 to understand the effects of EAB on ash populations...