Treesearch

A scientific consensus is building that the drawdown of very large amounts (at least 1,000 Gt [1.1 x 1012 tn]) of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere will be needed to stabilize the earth’s climate system at a safe temperature (Hansen et al. 2008; Cao and Caldeira 2010; IPCC 2018, 2019). The minimum estimated cost of this drawdown is tens of trillions of dollars over the course of a century and ultimately will depend on the total amount of fossil carbon (C) emitted by humankind (emissions must be reduced as quickly as possible to make any drawdown effective). The cost of drawdown,...

Wildfire is an annual threat for many rural communities in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. In some severe events, evacuation is one potential course of action to gain safety from an advancing wildfire. Since most evacuations occur in a personal vehicle along the surrounding road network, the quality of this network is a critical component of a community’s vulnerability to wildfire. In this paper, we leverage a high-resolution spatial dataset of wildfire burn probability and mean fireline intensity to conduct a regional-scale screening of wildfire evacuation vulnerability...

There are thousands of abandoned mine land (AML) sites in the U.S. that need to be restored to reduce wind and water erosion, provide wildlife forage, shade streams, and improve productivity. Biochar created from woody biomass that would normally be burned in slash piles can be applied to soil to improve soil properties and is one method to restore AML soil productive capacity. Using this ‘waste’ biomass for biochar and reclamation activities will reduce wildfire risk, air pollution from burning, and particulates released from burning wood. Biochar has the potential to improve water...

Aim: Non-native invasive plants impact ecosystems globally, and the distributions of many species are expanding. The current and potential distributions of many invaders have not been characterized at the broad scales needed for effective management. We modelled the distributions of 15 non-native invasive grass and forb species of concern in western North America to define their environmental niches and predict potential invasion risk. Location: Arid and semi-arid western United States. Methods: We modelled species distribution using presence/absence data from > 148,000 vegetation survey...

Tree species resistant to drought stress are likely to be more successful under the moisture-limited conditions predicted with climate change, and variation in drought-resistant traits can influence a species’ sensitivity to change. Trait variation is often tied to the timing, amount, and type of precipitation a given forest stand is exposed to, and local topographic heterogeneity may exacerbate or mitigate soil moisture stress. Although drought resistance is well-studied in widespread tree species, knowledge is limited on trait variation in droughtresistant conifers with more narrow...

The Forest Inventory Analysis (FIA) unit of the Southern Research Station annually compiles, analyzes, and reports sample data of pulpmills in the South. This report for 2018 presents the findings of a 100-percent sample of pulpmills that used roundwood or wood residues from the 13 Southern States. Of the 77 mills surveyed, 58 responded. For the 19 mills that did not respond, previous survey data and other sources of information were used for the findings reported in this publication. Regional conversion factors were used to convert mill data reported in nonstandard units to standard...

Emissions from a stand replacement prescribed burn were sampled using an unmanned aircraft system (UAS, or “drone”) in Fishlake National Forest, Utah, U.S.A. Sixteen flights over three days in June 2019 provided emission factors for a broad range of compounds including carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), nitric oxide (NO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), particulate matter < 2.5 μm in diameter (PM2.5), volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including carbonyls, black carbon, and elemental/organic carbon. To our knowledge, this is the first UAS-based emission sampling for a fire of this magnitude...

The intent of this article is to raise awareness about an underutilized funding mechanism that possesses the capacity to help tribal and federal land management agencies meet their goal of restoring fire-adapted ecosystems to historic conditions in the American Southwest. We attempt to achieve this through an exploration of the Reserved Treaty Rights Lands (RTRL) program and how it has been used to implement collaborative fuel management projects on National Forest lands. RTRL is a funding program administered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) that is designed to protect natural and...

Forest harvest, climate change, and their interaction can alter catchment peak discharges, which have ramifications for channel geomorphology and water quality. Catchments in the boreal-temperate transition zone may be especially vulnerable to these factors. We developed a new approach to peak flow analysis using two longterm, paired catchment experiments in that landscape at the Marcell Experimental Forest (MEF) in northcentral Minnesota. We investigated how forest cover change affects the magnitude, occurrence probability, event decoupling, and seasonal decoupling of annual maximum peak...

Where they are present in catchments, peatlands are a dominant source of dissolved organic matter (DOM) to surrounding waterways due, in part, to high production rates. Despite the preponderance of peatlands in northern latitudes and expected peatland vulnerability to climate change, little is known about peatland DOM degradation relative to a more comprehensive understanding of degradation when DOM is sourced from upland-dominated catchments. We compared DOM biodegradability of various sources of stream water in two catchments having peatlands (22%–33% of the area) surrounded by upland...