Treesearch

Standardized data on large-scale and long-term patterns of species richness are critical for understanding the consequences of natural and anthropogenic changes in the environment. The North American Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) is one of the largest and most widely used sources of such data, but so far, little is known about the degree to which BBS data provide accurate estimates of regional richness. Here, we test this question by comparing estimates of regional richness based on BBS data with spatially and temporally matched estimates based on state Breeding Bird Atlases (BBA). We...

Despite growing interest in developing extensive fuel treatment programs to prevent catastrophic wildfires in the Mediterranean region, there is little information on the projected effectiveness of fuel treatments in terms of avoided exposure and risk. In Portugal, a fuel management plan aiming to prevent loss of lives, reduce large fires (>500 ha), and reduce annual burned area is under implementation, with particular emphasis on the nation-wide fuel break network (FBN). In this study, we evaluated the effectiveness of the planned FBN in terms of meeting fire management objectives, costs,...

Active forest restoration programs on western US national forests face multiple challenges to meet their broad ecological goals while designing projects that generate sufficient revenue to build and maintain private forest management capacity needed to expand the scale and scope of treatments. We explored ways to design projects where admixing of treatments along gradients of dry and moist mixed conifer forest types could maximize financial viability while including substantial area where broadcast burning could be applied in conjunction with other treatments. In general, we found that...

National forest inventories (NFI), such as the one conducted by the United States Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program, provide valuable information regarding the status of forests at regional to national scales. However, forest managers often need information at stand to landscape scales. Given various small area estimation (SAE) approaches, including design-based and model-based estimation, it may not be clear which is most appropriate for the user’s application. In this study, our objective was to assess the uncertainty in tree aboveground live carbon (ALC)...