Understory

Climate change is a global threat. Science-informed actions can help mitigate extreme consequences.

We demonstrate the use of a deep learning (DL) approach for representing the behavior of a high-resolution physics-based wildland fire spread model. The ultimate objective is being able to efficiently use the DL model for intensive simulations of large fires while retaining fidelity to the fine-scale physical processes. We begin with a fire model that reduces the spatial domain of the fire spread problem to one dimension (1D). The 1Dmodel explicitly resolves cm-scale fuel variations, heat transfer and heating/drying dynamics of individual fuel particles and burning behavior of the bed. We then...

Fiscal Year 2022 was a time for CATT to clear the backlog of projects created during the covid-shortened field seasons of 2020-2021. We completed work on 10 field projects across 7 national forests and supported several Southern Research Station projects as well. The road-stream crossing inventories we completed will help several national forests to prioritize infrastructure improvement projects, our extensive stream fish and habitat inventories support project planning and forest-level monitoring, and our snorkeling education programs continue to show visitors the value of our forest waters.F...

America’s forests are increasingly vulnerable to fire, drought, severe storms, and outbreaks of insects and diseases. These disturbances are not new to forests, but the magnitude of their impact is growing. When scaled appropriately, disturbances regulate the flow of energy and nutrients to maintain healthy and productive forests. However, severe wildfires and drought in recent years have exceeded the capacity of forests and grasslands to recover to a healthy ecological state in a timely manner.

This presentation, "Monitoring Wildland Vegetation Phenology in Near-Real-Time with PhenoMap," gives a detailed introduction to the Phenomap tool, with explanation of the tool's use, inputs, outputs, validation, and more. Only presentation slides are available.

The Caspar Creek Experimental Watersheds (a collaboration between the USDA Forest Service and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, CAL FIRE) in Mendocino County, CA, have been the subject of a wide variety of timber harvest monitoring studies since they were established in 1961. These studies have largely been associated with three experimental harvests: the First Experiment removed approximately two thirds of the timber in the South Fork watershed in the early 1970s using selection harvest, the Second Experiment removed about 50% of the timber in the North Fork watershed...