Search by keywords, then use filters to narrow down results by type, year, topic, or ecosystem.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 74
An understanding of how historical fire and structure in dry forests (ponderosa pine, dry mixed conifer) varied across the western USA remains incomplete. Yet, fire strongly affects ecosystem services, and forest restoration programs are underway.…
Year Published:
Restoration treatments in dry forests of the western US often attempt silvicultural practices to restore the historical characteristics of forest structure and fire behavior. However, it is suggested that a reliance on non-spatial metrics of forest…
Year Published:
Ecological restoration treatments are being implemented at an increasing rate in ponderosa pine and other dry conifer forests across the western United States, via the USDA Forest Service’s Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) program.…
Year Published:
We conducted bird surveys in 10 of the first 11 years following a mixed-severity fire in a dry, low-elevation mixed-conifer forest in western Montana, United States. By defining fire in terms of fire severity and time-since-fire, and then comparing…
Year Published:
We used spatial optimization to analyze alternative restoration scenarios and quantify tradeoffs for a large, multifaceted restoration program to restore resiliency to forest landscapes in the western US. We specifically examined tradeoffs between…
Year Published:
The persistence of ponderosa pine and lodgepole pine forests in the 21st century depends to a large extent on how seedling emergence and establishment are influenced by driving climate and environmental variables, which largely govern forest…
Year Published:
The prevailing paradigm in the western U.S. is that the increase in stand-replacing wildfires in historically frequent-fire dry forests is due to unnatural fuel loads that have resulted from management activities including fire suppression, logging…
Year Published:
Current U.S. forest fire policy emphasizes short-term outcomes versus long-term goals. This perspective drives managers to focus on the protection of high-valued resources, whether ecosystem-based or developed infrastructure, at the expense of…
Year Published:
Increasingly, objectives for forests with moderate- or mixed-severity fire regimes are to restore successionally diverse landscapes that are resistant and resilient to current and future stressors. Maintaining native species and characteristic…
Year Published:
Fire frequency in low-elevation coniferous forests in western North America has greatly declined since the late 1800s. In many areas, this has increased tree density and the proportion of shade-tolerant species, reduced resource availability, and…
Year Published:
Hundreds of articles are published about wildland fires in Northern Rocky Mountain ponderosa pine communities. The author of this FEIS synthesis reviewed over 300 publications on historical and contemporary fuel loads, stand structure, and fire…
Year Published:
Forest ecosystems can act as sinks of carbon and thus mitigate anthropogenic carbon emissions. When forests are actively managed, treatments can alter forests carbon dynamics, reducing their sink strength and switching them from sinks to sources of…
Year Published:
Management and restoration of the dry, frequent-fire forests of the North American west depend on sound information about both historical and contemporary conditions to adequately address repercussions of fire suppression and changing climate. The…
Year Published:
Context: An increase in the incidence of large wildfires worldwide has prompted concerns about the resilience of forest ecosystems, particularly in the western U.S., where recent changes are linked with climate warming and 20th-century land…
Year Published:
Mixed conifer forests of western North America are challenging for fire management, as historical fire regimes were highly variable in severity, timing, and spatial extent. Complex fire histories combined with site factors and other disturbances,…
Year Published:
Induced defense is a common plant strategy in response to herbivory. Although abiotic damage, such as physical wounding, pruning, and heating, can induce plant defense, the effect of such damage by large-scale abiotic disturbances on induced…
Year Published:
The implementation of US federal forest restoration programs on national forests is a complex process that requires balancing diverse socioecological goals with project economics. Despite both the large geographic scope and substantial investments…
Year Published:
Forests that historically burned in mixed-severity fire regimes prove difficult to manage, especially when they border homes and prized recreation areas. This management challenge was the focus of the Fuels Reduction and Restoration in Mixed-Conifer…
Year Published:
For more than a century ecosystems around the world have experienced an increase in the dominance of woody species. While the drivers of woody plant proliferation are complex, interactions between climate and land-use change are commonly invoked as…
Year Published:
The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) was established over 20 years ago as an experiment in large landscape conservation. Initially, Y2Y emerged as a response to large scale habitat fragmentation by advancing ecological connectivity…
Year Published: