Treesearch

In the time covered by this synthesis, researchers of six Evaluation Monitoring (EM) projects under the national Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, presented findings on the effects of drought and other weather- or climate-related phenomena on specific aspects of forest health in the United States. (The term “weather” refers to the short-term behavior of the Earth’s atmosphere at the scale of minutes to months, while the term “climate” refers to long-term weather patterns.) One project mapped coastal forest mortality and change in...

Evaluation Monitoring (EM) projects under the national Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, explored approaches to better understand the role and effect of fire, specific targets for determining the ecological and economic effects of fire, and the relationship of fire to forest health conditions. Since fire is strongly related to forest health in ecological, social, cultural, and political ways, investigations of fire effects must also be multifaceted. Furthermore, quantifying the spatiotemporal association of fire and fire effects...

Ozone is the product of chemical reactions that take place in the lower atmosphere when volatile organic compounds mix and react with nitrogen oxides in the presence of sunlight. Ozone exposure, uptake, and sensitivity all play important roles in the response of plants to ozone. Weather patterns and changes in emissions of precursors account for a majority of year-to-year variations in ozone exposure. The uptake of ozone by plants depends upon many things, including physiological age, climate, light availability, site characteristics, and available soil moisture (Peterson and others 1993,...

Soil scientists have evaluated linkages between forests and soils for many years (e.g., Alway and McMiller 1933). The traditional soil surveys of landscapes in the United States are purposive, selecting for analysis sites that are deemed representative “of an extensive mappable area” (USDA Soil Survey Division Staff 1993). By contrast, the Soil Quality Indicator by the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, is a statistically-based survey of forest soils in the United States. The design and sampling strategy of the Soil Quality Indicator is powerful, and it lends itself to...

Evaluation Monitoring ( EM) has become a vital component of the national Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture. From the inception of the EM component in 1998 until 2007, over 150 projects were funded to address some of the most critical forest health issues facing the Nation’s forest ecosystems. The projects funded by the EM program from 1998 until 2007 covered a broad range of forest health issues. Of the EM projects discussed in this report, 34 percent evaluated tree disease problems, and 27 percent dealt with insect problems; the...

Many of the Evaluation Monitoring ( EM) projects funded by the national Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, have been motivated by perceived regional declines in specific tree species (or groups of species). Sometimes data collected from the FHM program’s former Detection Monitoring (DM) plots [now Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) Program (Forest Service) phase 3 plots] have suggested that a species or group of species were experiencing decline. Sometimes concern developed based primarily on observations by foresters and researche...

The full range of possible down woody material ( DWM) research includes wildlife, nutrient cycling, fungi, fuels, carbon, biomass, water cycling/stream structures, and stand structural diversity. Of studies on DWM by the national Forest Health Monitoring (FHM) Program of the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 80 percent primarily focused on fire-related objectives. The only two remaining studies not focused on fire dealt with the mapping of snags and coarse woody debris, close to the topic of mapping DWM found in many fire studies. The explicit request for Evaluation Monitoring...

This chapter describes seven projects focusing on the effects of defoliators, bark beetles, and the balsam woolly adelgid. Two of the defoliator projects addressed the effects of defoliation by the western spruce budworm (Choristoneura occidentalis), while a third developed methods for using satellite imagery to assess distribution of the aspen leaf miner (Phyllocnistis populiella) in Alaska. The budwormrelated projects considered the effects on fire potential and on the unstable habitat of the northern spotted owl east of the Cascade Mountains. Three bark beetle projects dealt with the...

Forest disease projects in the interior West focused mainly on characterizing the health of white pines relative to white pine blister rust (WPBR) incidence and intensity, and the dieback and mortality of quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) relative to drought, warmer temperatures, and accompanying secondary organisms. The dieback and mortality of thinleaf alder and incidence of armillaria root pathogens were also explored.

This chapter describes eight projects covering a wide range of disease issues in the region. Three of the projects involved investigations pertaining to decline syndromes or physiological problems in hardwoods (white oak, white ash and black ash), two were related to nonnative or organisms of unknown origin (Diplodia pinea and the organisms involved in the beech bark disease complex), and the others involved interactions of disease and prescribed fire, dwarf mistletoe in black spruce stands, and the native pinewood nematode.