Treesearch

The desert is hot, dry, and prickly … the perfect combination for wildfires. So, shouldn’t desert plants be used to fire? It turns out that Sonoran desert scrub communities, home to the iconic saguaro cactus, are vulnerable to frequent large or severe wildfires and may not recover for centuries, if at all. Recent publications by Rocky Mountain Research Station ecologists discuss how desert plants respond to fires, and how big, how often, and how hot fires burn in this ecosystem. The Fire Regime Synthesis about Sonoran desert scrub communities and associated Species Reviews are published in...

Fire suppression has increased competitive tree encroachment of Oregon white oak (Quercus garryanna Douglas ex Hook) ecosystems, threatening maintenance of this important species. Restoration of oak ecosystems is ideal to address this threat but not always possible, giving rise to a need for novel treatments that will allow oak to persist on an altered landscape. We tested the effect of three release treatments centered around individual Oregon oak trees within four forested sites that had developed following encroachment and overtopping by Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii[Mirb.] Franco...

Inland wetlands are critical carbon reservoirs storing 30% of global soil organic carbon (SOC) within 6% of the land surface. However, forested regions contain SOC-rich wetlands that are not included in current maps, which we refer to as ‘cryptic carbon’. Here, to demonstrate the magnitude and distribution of cryptic carbon, we measure and map SOC stocks as a function of a continuous, upland-to-wetland gradient across the Hoh River Watershed (HRW) in the Pacific Northwest of the U.S., comprising 68,145 ha. Total catchment SOC at 30 cm depth (5.0 TgC) is between estimates from global SOC...

Seed banks can provide insight into a forest's past and give land managers valuable information to help them plan for the forest's future. For example, knowing which species may germinate after future fires is valuable, especially when nonnative invasive species in the seed bank could proliferate quickly following disturbances

The fast-growing tree, eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides), currently is being planted to catalyze native forest restoration on degraded agricultural sites in the southeastern United States. Many of these restoration sites are appropriate for short rotation woody crop (SRWC) culture that addresses climate mitigation objectives, but information needed to optimize climate mitigation objectives through such plantings is limited. Therefore, we established a 10-year experiment on degraded agricultural land located in the Mississippi Alluvial Valley, USA, aiming to quantify the dynamics of...

This qualitative case study evaluates manager and researcher perceptions of the impact of a place-based, collaborative knowledge co-development process and examines the outcomes of that co-development for changes to management approaches. The USDA Forest Service (Forest Service) Rocky Mountain Research Station General Technical Report 373 (GTR-373) is a codeveloped science synthesis that functions as a boundary object providing a framework for planning, designing, and implementing management action for restoration of ponderosa and dry mixed-conifer forests. The process of creating and...

The 2021 Tamarack Fire in California, started by lightning in a national forest wilderness area, burned nearly 70,000 acres and eventually destroyed 24 structures. Because properties were damaged, the public and media scrutinized the fire management response. This fire exemplifies not only the challenges of fire management in land and resource management, but also how shortcomings in the fire response reporting system can make way for misperceptions to dominate the public narrative.

Monitoring the status of nitrogen (N) deposition is a prerequisite for evaluating its ecological and environmental impacts. This chapter reviews the monitoring strategies to measure N deposition to forest ecosystems in six different regions (Europe, North America, East Asia, South Asia, Africa, Central and South America). The current status of monitoring is at very different stages for these regions, ranging from sophisticated and coordinated monitoring networks devoted to the quantification of fluxes to both forested and non-forested sites to sparse intensive studies with variations in...

While using sap-flow sensor measurements is a well-established technique for quantifying leaf water transpiration in tree species, installing and maintaining a large number of sensors and data loggers in large-scale plantations to obtain accurate measurements is both costly and time-consuming. We developed a copula-based approach to predict sap flows based on readily available vapor pressure deficits (VPDs) and found that the Normal copula was the best among five commonly used copulas. The Normal-copula approach was validated using our field-measured eastern cottonwood (Populus deltoides...

This guide identifies seven primary components that largely determine the outcomes of vegetation treatments to reduce fuels and maintain or increase resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive annual plants. The components are (1) characteristics of the ecological type, (2) current, pre-treatment vegetation, (3) disturbance and management history, (4) fuel characteristics and appropriate treatments, (4) treatment severity and ecological response, (6) seeding considerations, and (7) post-treatment monitoring and management. Key questions and a set of tools are provided to assess...