Treesearch

Wildfire management in the US relies on a complex nationwide network of shared resources that are allocated based on regional need. While this network bolsters firefighting capacity, it may also provide pathways for transmission of infectious diseases between fire sites. In this manuscript, we review a first attempt at building an epidemiological model adapted to the interconnected fire system, with the aims of supporting prevention and mitigation efforts along with understanding potential impacts to workforce capacity. Specifically, we developed an agent-based model of COVID-19 built on...

The wildfire management community has made great strides incorporating new decision support tools into how it plans for and responds to wildfire incidents. Despite improvements in risk assessment and management at the incident scale, increasing fire activity and critical resource shortages reveal a system under strain in need of strategies that more efficiently allocate scarce resources across incidents while promoting the well-being of the firefighting workforce upon which the system relies. A scaled-up infusion of data-driven analysis and decision-making could enhance the performance of...

Forest management guidelines are designed to protect water quality from unintended effects of land use changes such as timber harvest, mining, or forest road construction. Although streams that periodically cease to flow (nonperennial) drain the majority of forested areas, these streams are not consistently included in forest management guidelines. This paper reviews management guidelines for nonperennial (intermittent and ephemeral) streams draining temperate forests in the continental U.S., evaluates potential impacts of land use activities on ecosystem services provided by these...

This chapter is a review and synthesis of research conducted at Glacier Lakes Ecosystem Experiments Site (GLEES) on stream nutrients and biological responses. It is intended to inform national and regional water quality regulatory agencies, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Wyoming Department of Environmental Quality (WDEQ), about existing results of relevant scientific studies that are available at GLEES, and to identify future field and synthetic research of potential use to regulatory agencies that might be conducted at GLEES.

Genetic diversity is essential because it provides a basis for adaptation and resilience to environmental stress and change. The fundamental importance of genetic variation is recognized by its inclusion in the Montréal Process sustainability criteria and indicators for temperate and boreal forests. The indicator that focuses on forest species at risk of losing genetic variation, however, has been difficult to address in a systematic fashion. We combined two broad-scale datasets to inform this indicator for the United States: (1) tree species occurrence data from the national Forest...

North America’s Mediterranean climate zone (NAMCZ) includes most of California, southwestern Oregon, a slice of western Nevada, and northwestern Baja California, Mexico. Climatically, the world’s Mediterranean climate regions are unique because the wet season is concurrent with the cold season, and the warm, dry season is akin to an annual drought of 3–7 months. Most of the NAMCZ receives sufficient precipitation in the winter and early spring to produce a crop of fuel just in time for the hot, dry summer. Vegetation in the NAMCZ is among the most fire-prone and fire-shaped on the continent...

* Rangeland-based livestock raising is the only agricultural production system that maintains native plant communities, providing ecosystem services in the same space as food and fiber production. * Annual aboveground net primary productivity (ANPP) underlies forage production and multiple ecosystem services. ANPP is highly variable in rangelands in the western United States, across the landscape, from year to year, and within a growing season. Variability is also increasing as the climate changes. * Grazing management decisions that determine when, where, and how much of ANPP is consumed...

Over the past century the size and severity of wildfires, as well as post-fire recovery processes (e.g., seedling establishment), have been altered from historical levels due to management policies and changing climate. Tree seedling establishment and growth drive future overstory tree dynamics after wildfire. Post-fire tree regeneration can be highly variable depending on burn severity, pre-fire forest condition, tree regeneration strategies, and climate; however, few studies have examined how different abiotic and biotic factors impact seedling density and growth and the interactions...

As wildland fires amplify in size in many regions in the western USA, land and water managers are increasingly concerned about the deleterious effects on drinking water supplies. Consequences of severe wildfires include disturbed soils and areas of thick ash cover, which raises the concern of the risk of water contamination via ash. The persistence of ash cover and depth were monitored for up to 90 days post-fire at nearly 100 plots distributed between two wildfires in Idaho and Washington, USA. Our goal was to determine the most ‘cost’ effective, operational method of mapping post-wildfire...

There is increasing demand in environmental remediation and other sectors for specialized sorbents made from renewable materials rather than hard coals and minerals. The proliferation of new pyrolysis technologies to produce bio-based energy, fuels, chemicals, and bioproducts from biomass has left significant gaps in our understanding of how the various carbonaceous materials produced by these systems respond to processes intended to improve their adsorption properties and commercial value. This study used conventional steam activation in an industrial rotary calciner to produce activated...