Topic: Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction

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 in restoration projects, a quantitative decision…

More than a century of forest and fire management of Inland Pacific landscapes has transformed their successional and disturbance dynamics. Regional connectivity of many terrestrial and aquatic habitats is fragmented, flows of some ecological and physical processes have been altered in space and…

With the potential for worsening fire conditions, discussion is escalating over how to best reduce effects on urban communities. A widely supported strategy is the creation of defensible space immediately surrounding homes and other structures. Although state and local governments publish…

Land managers in the Pacific Northwest have reported a need for updated scientific information on the ecology and management of mixed-conifer forests east of the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington. Of particular concern are the moist mixed-conifer forests, which have become drought-stressed…

Much of the 10 million acres of forestland in eastern Washington faces serious threats to forest health. Decades of fire suppression and past management practices that changed the species and structure of these forests have put them at higher risk of damage by disease, insects and wildfire.

The forest restoration challenge (globally 2 billion ha) and the prospect of changing climate with increasing frequency of extreme events argues for approaching restoration from a functional and landscape perspective. Because the practice of restoration utilizes many techniques common to…

A principal challenge to restoring tree-invaded grasslandsis the removal of woody biomass. Burning of slash pilesto reduce woody residues from forest restoration practicesgenerates intense, prolonged heating, with adverse effectson soils and vegetation. In this study, we examined…

The concept of historic range of variability (HRV) is briefly evaluatedwithin the context of its application in ecosystem managementover the past two decades. Despite caveats to the contrary, animplicit assumption continues to emerge of climatic stationarity,and, by corollary, that presettlement…

Forest management of dry forests in the western US that historically experienced mixed-severity fire regimes is increasingly focused on landscape-scale restoration. However, this restoration effort is constrained by historic range of variation (HRV) reference conditions that lack information…