Understory

The FIA Annual Business Reports evaluate the performance of the FIA program to ensure accountability and transparency to FIA partners, supporters and customers. Modeled on a corporate business report, they contain basic business information about the FIA program including accomplishments, performance measures, plans for the next fiscal year, agreements with other parties, and basic financial and staffing data. These reports are prepared by the National Office staff of the FIA Program, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Washington, DC.See more information for fiscal years 2021 and ...

Whitebark pine has been rapidly declining on many National Forests in the northwestern United States over the last three decades because of blister rust infections and mountain pine beetle outbreaks, which have been exacerbated by recent warmer climates. Great care should be taken to preserve, protect, and conserve the remaining whitebark pine because their populations are so low that future disturbances, especially those facilitated by climate change, could cause local extinctions of this valuable keystone species that provides food to hundreds of wildlife species. Silvicultural cuttings and ...

SILVAH Allegheny Hardwoods Tally Sheets

This is the second paper in a series that focuses on the social and organizational dynamics of urban environmental stewardship. This paper presents results from research on volunteer stewards at MillionTreesNYC tree planting events in spring and fall 2010, which were sponsored by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation and the New York Restoration Project, a non-profit organization focused on enhancing underused green spaces throughout NYC. Although recent academic and policy studies have focused on the increasingly wide range of organizations working as stewards to conserve, mana...

A macroinvertebrate assessment was conducted on the Caspar Creek Experimental Watershed in northwestern California using a functional feeding group (FFG) classification. The approach, developed over 30 years ago (Cummins 1973), has been tested, modified, and employed in many studies (e.g. Cummins and Klug 1979, Cummins and Wilzbach 1985), Merritt and Cummins 2006). The approach categorizes macroinvertebrates based on their morphological and behavioral mechanisms by which they acquire one or more of six general food types: coarse particulate organic matter (CPOM), fine particulate organic matte...

Lake Tahoe's water clarity has decreased from ~100 feet in the 1970 to ~70 feet in the last few years. Fine inorganic particles are causing about 58% of light attenuation in Secchi disk measurements of water clarity. The 2010 draft of the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) report indicated that the sources of sediment include urban upland loading (i.e., storm water runoff, 72%), non-urban upland loading (9%), atmospheric deposition (both dry and wet, 15%), and stream channel erosion (4%). The project report describes measurements and results collected in the Tahoe Basin that investigate the trans...

The rich diversity of ecosystems and native plants and animals is one of Oregon's most distinctive and valued qualities. Our state contains rain forests, dry forests, oak woodlands, alpine meadows, prairies, deserts, marshes, estuaries, dunes, rocky headlands, lakes and streams. There are a number of reasons it is so diverse. First are the extremes of climate, with rainfall ranging from over 200 inches a year along Oregon’s north coast, to less than 7 inches a year in the Alvord Desert, and temperatures from the very mild banana belt along the coast near the California border to the extremes o...