Treesearch

Seeding an area after a fire has long been used to control erosion and suppress problem invasive grasses like cheatgrass. But for managers, choosing the right seed mix to use can be tricky. Seed mixes containing only native species are ideal for areas where natural vegetation recovery is a long-term objective, but there is a question of both cost and whether native species will be as effective as nonnatives in outcompeting invasive species.

For a land type that covers relatively little area, riparian areas and groundwater-dependent ecosystems are an extremely important component of healthy watersheds and ecological function. Yet over the past few centuries, many of these areas have been stressed by a wide range of land uses. Restoring them can be complex, expensive, and even unpopular. In the Intermountain West, National Forests often provide more range than timber, making riparian areas and groundwater-dependent ecosystems both valuable and vulnerable. Additionally, more information on these systems is typically needed for...

The eDNAtlas contains over 15,000 samples from the Western and Eastern United States. Because the samples are archived, biologists can later test the samples for the presence of other species. The use of eDNA to confirm the absence or presence of a species is valuable when determining the success of a habitat restoration project, assessing the presence of federally listed species, or evaluating local distributions.

The most arid region of the United States - the Southwest - is expected to become even warmer and drier in the future as the climate changes, according to several global climate models. The USDA Forest Service and its partners need information about the potential effects of a changing climate so that adaptation strategies can be developed for people and ecosystems.

Extreme, downslope mountain winds often generate dangerous wildfire conditions. We used the wildfire spread model Fire Area Simulator (FARSITE) to simulate two wildfires influenced by strong wind events in Santa Barbara, CA. High spatial-resolution imagery for fuel maps and hourly wind downscaled to 100 m were used as model inputs, and sensitivity tests were performed to evaluate the effects of ignition timing and location on fire spread. Additionally, burn area rasters from FARSITE simulations were compared to minimum travel time rasters from FlamMap simulations, a wildfire model similar...

Local regulations on residential landscapes (yards and gardens) can facilitate or constrain ecosystem services and disservices in cities. To our knowledge, no studies have undertaken a comprehensive look at how municipalities regulate residential landscapes to achieve particular goals and to control management practices. Across six U.S. cities, we analyzed 156 municipal ordinances to examine regional patterns in local landscape regulations and their implications for sustainability. Specifically, we conducted content analysis to capture regulations aimed at: 1) goals pertaining to conservati...

Increasing the sagebrush habitat in the Great Basin Ecoregion remains a management concern for the agencies and conservation organizations within this region. Large-scale removal of the pinyon-juniper woodlands is one method for achieving this objective, particularly in the greater sage grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) priority areas for conservation (PACs). However, there’s concern that removal of these woodlands will result in a loss of habitat for pinyon-juniper associated bird species to the benefit of sagebrush associated bird species.

Despite a critical need to evaluate effectiveness of forest treatments in improving stand health, practitioners lack quantitative, repeatable metrics to assess tree vigor and stand health. We evaluated canopy and whole tree attributes of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. Ex Laws) related to carbon balance, water balance, and susceptibility to insects and pathogens in dry, pine-dominated forest stands during a multi-year drought, an environmental challenge to stand resilience. Metrics of trees in two unmanaged, and seven treated forested stands, in both uplands and lowlands to develop...

Wildland fuels, defined as the combustible biomass of live and dead vegetation, are foundational to fire behavior, ecological effects, and smoke modeling. Along with weather and topography, the composition, structure and condition of wildland fuels drive fire spread, consumption, heat release, plume production and smoke dispersion. To refine inputs to existing and next-generation smoke modeling tools, improved characterization of the spatial and temporal dynamics of wildland fuels is necessary. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models that resolve fire–atmosphere interactions offer a...

• The extent to which water availability can be used to predict the enlargement and final dimensions of xylem conduits remains an open issue. • We reconstructed the time course of tracheid enlargement in Pinus sylvestris trees in central Spain by repeated measurements of tracheid diameter on microcores sampled weekly during a 2 yr period. We analyzed the role of water availability in these dynamics empirically through time-series correlation analysis and mechanistically by building a model that simulates daily tracheid enlargement rate and duration based on Lockhart’s equation and water...