Treesearch

Forest managers working in dry forest ecosystems must contend with the costs and benefits of fire, and they are seeking forest management strategies that enhance the resilience of forests and landscapes to future disturbances in a changing climate. An interdisciplinary science team worked with resource managers and stakeholders to assess future forest ecosystem dynamics, given potential climatic changes and management strategies, across a 23,000-ha landscape in the Lake Tahoe basin of California and Nevada in support of the Lake Tahoe West Restoration Partnership. We projected forest...

Biodiversity appears to strongly suppress pathogens and pests in many plant and animal systems. However, this "dilution effect" is not consistently detected, and when present can vary strikingly in magnitude. Here, we use forest inventory data from over 25,000 plots (>1.1 million sampled trees) to quantify the strength of the dilution effect on dozens of forest pests and clarify why some pests are particularly sensitive to biodiversity. Using Bayesian hierarchical models, we show that pest prevalence is frequently lower in highly diverse forests, but there is considerable variability in...

Media stories highlighted accounts of migration away from city centers towards more rural destinations during the COVID-19 pandemic, but systematic research about how the pandemic changed migration in more rural destinations is only starting to emerge. This paper relies on U.S. Postal Service change-of- address data to describe whether and how established domestic migration systems changed during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on differences across the rural–urban gradient and by outdoor recreation resources. We find little evidence of massive urban exodus. We do find that out-migration...

The USDA Forest Service, Forest Products Laboratory, was asked to inspect the main support timbers of a historic building at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Center in Tomah, Wisconsin. This report summarizes the results obtained from the inspection and assessment. It includes a summary of observations, wood species identification, and recommendations.

Managing private forests for wildfire resilience is challenging due to conflicting social, economic, and ecological decisions that may result in an increase of surface fuel loads leading to greater fire risk. Due to fire suppression and a changing climate, land managers in fire-prone regions face an increasing threat of high severity fires. Thus, land managers need fuel treatment options that match their forest types and management objectives. One potential option for producers that graze livestock is silvopasture management, where livestock, forages, and overstory vegetation are carefully...

Pre-plant soil fumigation is widely applied to control nematodes, soil-borne fungal pathogens, and weeds in vegetable crops. However, most of the research evaluating the effect of fumigants on crop yield and soil microbial communities has been done on single compounds despite growers mainly applying fumigant combinations. We studied the effect of different fumigant combinations (chloropicrin, 1,3-dichloropropene, and metam potassium) on soil properties, crop yield, and the soil bacterial and fungal microbiome for two consecutive years in a plastic-mulched tomato production system in...

We propose the core collaborative community science framework, an original conceptual framework that integrates and modifies best practices from community science and collective impact groups to support investigations of environmental health and justice. The core collaborative community science framework differs from more typical frameworks for community science, which often frame projects as static and either scientist or community led; these framings can limit the potential for co-production and action-oriented models of science. Frameworks are lacking to help community science collaborat...

Contrary to broad perceptions, high mountain streams are warming more slowly than low-elevation streams and rivers. Studies by Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) scientists and their collaborators show that they will sustain populations of cold-water species, including fish such as threatened bull trout and cutthroat trout, even as the climate warms. This is also good news for other animals dependent on cold-water systems, including birds such as the American dipper and harlequin duck, mammals such as river otters, and insects such as stone flies and mayflies, which are critical to...

In the westernmost Canadian province of British Columbia, fishers (Pekania pennanti) occur in low-elevation forested ecosystems in the central and northern portions of the province, with several substantial mountain ranges and rivers bisecting this distribution. The effect of these geographic features on gene flow and population structuring is unknown and may contribute to fishers differentiating into 2 or more populations within the province. To better understand population structuring within the range of fishers in British Columbia, we collected tissue samples from 491 fishers from...

Background: Wildfire is a major proximate cause of historical and ongoing losses of intact big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) plant communities and declines in sagebrush obligate wildlife species. In recent decades, fire return intervals have shortened and area burned has increased in some areas, and habitat degradation is occurring where post-fire re-establishment of sagebrush is hindered by invasive annual grasses. In coming decades, the changing climate may accelerate these wildfire and invasive feedbacks, although projecting future wildfire dynamics requires a better understandi...