Treesearch

The need for strategic foresight in an increasingly complex and rapidly changing world poses a formidable challenge to environmental planners and policy makers. Th is paper introduces futures research as an under used but fruitful set of approaches to addressing this challenge. Futures research is a transdisciplinary social science that uses a wide range of methods to explore possible, plausible, and preferable futures with the goal of anticipating and preparing for those futures. Th e historical context for environmental futures is briefly reviewed, an overview of futures research as a...

This paper describes the rudiments of an approach to the future that we should teach and practice in our personal and professional lives. It begins with a consideration of change. The future is about change. If there were no change, we would have no reason to pay attention to the future. The paper concludes with an approach to long-term forecasting that takes uncertainty seriously. The result is a set of plausible futures for which we must be ready; otherwise, we run the risk of being surprised—or worse.

The Renewable Resources Planning Act of 1974 requires the USDA Forest Service to conduct assessments of resource conditions. This report fulfills that need and focuses on quantifying extent, productivity, and health of U.S. rangelands. Since 1982, the area of U.S. rangelands has decreased at an average rate of 350,000 acres per year owed mostly to conversion to agricultural and residential land uses. Nationally, rangeland productivity has been steady over the last decade, but the Rocky Mountain Assessment Region appears to have moderately increased productivity since 2000. The forage...

These papers, presented in a special session at the International Symposium on Society and Resource Management in June 2011, explore the transdisciplinary field of futures research and its application to long-range environmental analysis, planning, and policy. Futures research began in the post-World War II era and has emerged as a mature research field. Although the future of complex social-ecological systems cannot be predicted, these papers show how futures research can offer perspectives and methods that help researchers, decisionmakers, and other stakeholders explore alternative...

Due to the diurnal and seasonal fluctuations in leaf-to-air vapor pressure deficit (D), one of the key regulatory roles played by stomata is to limit transpiration-induced leaf water deficit. Different types of plants are known to vary in the sensitivity of stomatal conductance (gs) to D with important consequences for their survival and growth. Plants that minimize any increase in transpiration with increasing D have a tight stomatal regulation of a constant minimum leaf water potential (Ψleaf); these plants are termed as ‘isohydric’ (Stocker 1956). Plants that have less control of...

Western redcedar (Thuja plicata Donn ex D. Don), a member of the Cupressaceae, is an important commercial species in British Columbia (BC) and the Pacific Northwest (PNW), which is prized for its heartwood and its performance as a naturally durable outdoor building material. Although a genetic improvement program has been ongoing for only 15 years in BC, substantial progress has been made owing in part to its unique genetic and biological properties. These include early precious flowering and short generations (Russell and Ferguson 2008), the ability to self with minimal inbreeding...

Inventory foresters often quake when asked to count tree seedlings, because the work is tedious and sometimes means tallying hundreds of stems. They also know that the density and quality of advance regeneration are key to the success of new stand establishment. Seedling counts provide valuable information on regeneration adequacy, forest diversity, wildlife habitat, and the sustainability of native forests. In response to a general lack of information on advance regeneration at the landscape level, the US Forest Service's Northern Research Station’s Forest Inventory and Analysis (NRS-FIA)...

A dramatic decline in the production of hardwood furniture in the United States has had profound impacts on employment and hardwood markets. Against this backdrop, the Amish-based furniture manufacturing cluster in Ohio has expanded and hardwood lumber consumption by the cluster is significant. Recent research suggests that 71 percent of firms in the cluster expanded during a 3-year period from 2006-2008, even as the overall domestic industry contracted. Another measure of success (and indicative of the small size of many of the firms) is the finding that a plurality of firms (46 percent)...

Increasing variability of rainfall patterns requires detailed understanding of the pathways of water loss from ecosystems to optimize carbon uptake and management choices. In the current study we characterized the usability of three alternative methods of different rigor for quantifying stand-level evapotranspiration (ET), partitioned ET into tree transpiration (T), understory transpiration, interception, and soil evaporation (ES) and determined their sensitivity to drought, and evaluated the reliability of soil moisture measurements by taking into account deep soil moisture dynamic. The...

The genetic variation across a species’ range is an important factor in speciation and conservation, yet searching for general patterns and underlying causes remains challenging. While the majority of comparisons between central and marginal populations have revealed a general central–marginal (C-M) decline in genetic diversity, others show no clear pattern. Similarly, most latitudinal studies (although much fewer, especially those conducted rangewide) also showed latitudinal trends in genetic variation. To date, the C-M and latitudinal patterns have often been examined independently and...