Treesearch

An increase in the occurrence of large, high severity wildfires in the western Pacific Northwest (PNW), USA, has created an urgent need for science to better inform forest management and policy decisions to maintain source water quality in the region. The western PNW faces similar challenges to other regions with shifting wildfire regimes and large population centers reliant on surface water from forested catchments. However, the uniquely wet and highly seasonal climate of the western PNW suggests that findings from other, more frequently burned regions may not be directly applicable. To...

Alfalfa is a widely cultivated forage crop with high nutritional value, and it relies heavily on pollinators for successful reproduction owing to its keel petal structure. Numerous studies have shown the differences in pollinator diversity at different landscapes and/or regions, subsequently impacting plant reproduction. However, there is still insufficient evidence on variation in pollinator diversity at different sites with different landscapes and its effects on alfalfa reproduction. In this study, we investigated the diversity and abundance of floral visitors, and their impacts on...

Biodiversity can enhance forest resistance to drought, but the forms of diversity involved and conditions under which diversity confers resistance remain unclear. We used Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) plot data to examine whether four variables—structural richness (variation in tree heights, stand density, canopy cover and/or spatial heterogeneity), species richness (number of tree species), structural evenness and species evenness—are associated with the resistance of net primary productivity to drought and whether these relationships change with drought severity and by ecoregion....

Homeowner wildfire risk mitigation and preparedness are important components of community wildfire readiness. This report describes the data collected through two efforts conducted in the Funny River, Alaska, study area: (1) parcel-level rapid wildfire risk assessments performed by trained assessors and (2) homeowner surveys in which respondents provided self-assessments of their parcel-level wildfire risk. This project was undertaken to support the Kenai Peninsula Borough Office of Emergency Management and Central Emergency Services to inform decisions about wildfire adaptation. The...

Public lands provide extensive recreation opportunities for activities including camping and cabins, biking, horseback riding, hiking, and fishing. Due to increasing visitation and the associated impacts to natural resources and the visitor experience, recreation managers may decide to adopt a recreation allocation strategy to limit the number of visitors at a given time. Allocation includes allotment (splitting between groups such as commercial use and private use) and rationing (a mechanism for allocating within groups). The main strategies used for rationing include first come, first...

Demand for recreation on public lands has outpaced supply in many highly popular locations in the United States of America and globally. The task of distributing these limited recreation opportunities among individuals or groups (known as allocation) has long plagued recreation managers. However, limited empirical information is available concerning best practices for selecting an allocation mechanism (e.g., permits available through first-come, first-served, open reservations, lotteries, etc.) that best meets the management objectives and constraints of a given site—including temporal...

The Timber Products Output (TPO) survey, administered by the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program of the USDA Forest Service, collects data annually from primary wood processing mills. The survey collects data on the volume of roundwood received and residues generated by the primary forest industry by major tree species and counties of harvest. Prior to 2019, the TPO survey was implemented as a full census of all active mills, with varying frequencies across FIA regions. For Southern FIA, TPO surveys of non-pulp mills were delivered every other year. From 2019 forward, TPO transition...

Innovation in packaging design will be facilitated by a simple test method to indicate whether a product is compatible with paper recycling. Three laboratories cooperated on the development of a method and used it on linerboard, coated paperboard, wet-strength paperboard, and white copy paper. This test method includes pulping and screening. The data presented here illustrate the factors affecting the results of a bench-scale test. Our observations show that a bench-scale test can give reproducible results for yield of less than 5%. We also present an approach to contaminant assessment...

This comment challenges claims made by the Forest Flows Programme (Meason et al., 2025) regarding the water use of Pinus radiata plantations and the water yield from pine-forested catchments across New Zealand. Using robust, previously established evidence, it is argued here that instead of dispelling some commonly held beliefs, Meason et al. have created new forest hydrological myths by underestimating pine-tree water use and overestimating subsurface flows based on an erroneous conceptualization of key processes and water-balance components. In the authors' view, this not only renders...

We revisit the research legacy of J.R. Blais and re-evaluate his contributions to spruce budworm—forest dynamics in light of a century of research, 1924–2025. We trace the evolution of scientific thought on outbreak ecology and reassess Blais’ foundational insights using contemporary data and methods. Blais’ alignment with a bottom-up, host-driven outbreak paradigm—centered on forest composition and epicentric spread—anticipated many findings now supported by modern research. Re-analysis of Blais’ historical outbreak maps (1802–1940) reveals a longitudinal gradient in outbreak frequency...