Treesearch

The Landscape Change Monitoring System (LCMS) is an important new dataset and tool that allows the user to create landscape scale historical disturbance maps. LCMS combines satellite imagery with other monitoring data to produce annual maps showing change (vegetation loss and vegetation gain), land cover, and land use, generating a “best available” map covering multiple disturbance processes and diverse cover types.

The Lassen and Modoc National Forests are located where the Great Basin, the Sierra Nevada, and the Southern Cascades meet. For forest plan revisions, other science syntheses have focused on the Cascades and the Sierra Nevada and are relevant to the Lassen and Modoc National Forests but do not cover some important ecosystems and topics.

RMRS-GTR-403 is a comprehensive science synthesis of findings from over 1,000 publications. It provides the best available information on the distribution, history, ecology, hydrology, and management of pinyon and juniper woodlands in the Great Basin and on the Colorado Plateau.

A recently published review and synthesis of 78 scientific studies, published from 2000-2019, of stream flow and snowpack response to disturbances reframes our understanding of how forests affect water supply in the semi-arid West.

Wildfire SAFE incorporates real-time data from sources that include the U.S. National Fire Danger Rating System, U.S. Drought Monitor drought conditions, weather data, and vegetation conditions to provide targeted information on any wildfire in the continental United States.

The Wildfire Risk to Communities website (https://wildfirerisk.org/) is a one-stop resource where citizens and community leaders can assess the wildfire risk of their area and find resources to reduce the risk.

Potential Operational Delineations (PODs) is a spatial wildfire planning framework that brings together operational fire responses and landscape management goals from Forest Planning documents. It was developed by scientists at the Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) Wildfire Risk Management Science Team, Colorado Forest Restoration Institute (CFRI) and Oregon State University College of Forestry, and forest and fire managers.

In the western United States, many forests that had adapted to survive frequent fire look much different than they used to. Past and current management practices ranging from fire exclusion to timber harvesting and grazing have altered species composition and left forests with greater tree density. These changes leave extensive areas vulnerable to uncharacteristic high-intensity wildfire killing trees that had survived fires over centuries. How can we restore ponderosa pine-dominated forests today to make them more resilient to future fires especially given this quandary: no one alive...

Due to generally dry conditions of the central Rocky Mountain’s Front Range, morphological characteristics are a more reliable predictor of tree age than diameter at breast height (dbh). Older trees (> 150 years old) have morphological characteristics that include a high crown base height, large branches, a flattened crown, and orange smooth bark. Morphological characteristics of younger trees (< 150 years old) include a low crown base height, small branches, a pointed crown, and black, rough bark. Transitional trees, those with characteristics of both older and younger trees, were usually...

Dan McCollum, a research economist with the Rocky Mountain Research Station, recently co-authored a related article titled “Bark Beetle Infestation of Western U.S. Forests: A Context for Assessing and Evaluating Impacts.” Published in the March 2019 issue of Journal of Forestry, the article uses bark beetles as an example to describe an “overall impact” evaluation approach for complex disturbance events. According to the article, effective evaluations consider the interactions and feedbacks between ecological factors and socioeconomic factors, as well as between direct and indirect...