Research Database
Displaying 161 - 176 of 176
Is Proactive Adaptation to Climate Change Necessary in Grazed Rangelands?
Year: 2012
In this article we test the notion that adaptation to climate change in grazed rangelands requires little more effort than current approaches to risk management because the inherent climate variability that characterizes rangelands provides a management environment that is preadapted to climate change. We also examine the alternative hypothesis that rangeland ecosystems and the people they support are highly vulnerable to climate change. Past climate is likely to become an increasingly poor predictor of the future, so there is a risk in relying on adaptation approaches developed solely in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Ecosystem Greenspots: Identifying Potential Drought, Fire, and Climate-Change Micro-Refuges
Year: 2012
In response to climate change and other threatening processes there is renewed interest in the role of refugia and refuges. In bioregions that experience drought and fire, micro-refuges can play a vital role in ensuring the persistence of species. We develop and apply an approach to identifying potential micro-refuges based on a time series of remotely sensed vegetation greenness (fraction of photosynthetically active radiation intercepted by the sunlit canopy; fPAR). The primary data for this analysis were NASA MODIS 16-day L3 Global 250 m (MOD13Q1) satellite imagery. This method draws upon…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Using niche models with climate projections to inform conservation management decisions
Year: 2012
Conservation science strives to inform management decisions. Applying niche models in concert with future climate projections to project species vulnerability to extinction, range size loss, or distribution shifts has emerged as a potentially useful tool for informing resource management decisions. Making climate change niche modeling useful to conservation decisions requires centering studies on the types of decisions that are made regarding the focal taxa of a niche model study. Recent recommendations for climate adaptation strategies suggest four types of decision makers: policy, habitat…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Vegetation recovery after fire in the Klamath-Siskiyou region, southern Oregon
Year: 2011
This overview is intended to facilitate decisions regarding forest regeneration in the Klamath-Siskiyou Ecoregion. It summarizes the results of several scientific investigations that took place in the ecoregion. Some of the research occurred in areas without post-fire management, and other research occurred in moderately or intensively managed areas. Some of the research also occurred immediately after a wildfire, and other work occurred several decades later.
Publication Type: Report
Responding to Climate Change in National Forests: A Guidebook for Developing Adaptation Options
Year: 2011
This guidebook contains science-based principles, processes, and tools necessary to assist with developing adaptation options for national forest lands. The adaptation process is based on partnerships between local resource managers and scientists who work collaboratively to understand potential climate change effects, identify important resource issues, and develop management options that can capitalize on new opportunities and reduce deleterious effects. Because management objectives and sensitivity of resources to climate change differ among national forests, appropriate processes and…
Publication Type: Report
Woodpecker Habitat After the Fire
Year: 2011
Public land managers are asked to minimize fuel levels after fires, including using techniques such as salvage logging. They are also responsible for maintaining suitable wildlife habitat, especially for species of concern to state and federal agencies. An area where these responsibilities could conflict is in the use of salvage logging in burned-over areas that also represent good habitat for certain wildlife such as woodpeckers. Controversy over this conflict has led to litigation. Public land management agencies need consistent design criteria to maintain suitable habitats for these birds…
Publication Type: Report
Effectiveness of post-fire seeding at the Fitzner-Eberhardt Arid Land Ecology Reserve, Washington
Year: 2011
In August 2007, the Milepost 17 and Wautoma fires burned a combined total of 77,349 acres (31,302 hectares) of the Fitzner-Eberhardt Arid Land Ecology Reserve (ALE), part of the Hanford Reach National Monument administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Mid-Columbia National Wildlife Refuge. In 2008, the USFWS implemented a series of seeding and herbicide treatments to mitigate potential negative consequences of these fires, including mortality of native vegetation, invasion of Bromus tectorum (cheatgrass), and soil erosion. Treatments included combinations of seeding (drill…
Publication Type: Report
Nontribal community recovery from wildfire five years later: The case of the Rodeo-Chediski fire
Year: 2011
Recent literature suggests that natural disasters such as wildfires often have the short-term effect of ‘‘bringing people together’’ while also under some circumstances generating social conflict at the local level. Conflict has been documented particularly when social relations are disembedded by nonlocal entities and there is a perceived loss of local agency. There is less agreement about longer term impacts. We present results of a re-study of a set of communities affected by the largest wildfire in Arizona history. The re-study uses structuration theory to suggest that while local…
Publication Type: Journal Article
After the Fire is Out
Year: 2011
Even before firefighters have left a burn site, a second wave of specialists is deployed. Their task: to assess the burn site; determine the level of risk to life, property, and ecological resources; and determine quickly the most effective postfire treatments for emergency stabilization and initial rehabilitation of the site. For the past 13 years, the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) has funded research on this critical phase of work, which often goes unnoticed after the fire is out. With support from the JFSP, scientists have made great strides in improving the tools available to assess…
Publication Type: Report
Forest ecosystems, disturbance, and climatic change in Washington State, USA
Year: 2010
Climatic change is likely to affect Pacific Northwest (PNW) forests in several important ways. In this paper, we address the role of climate in four forest ecosystem processes and project the effects of future climatic change on these processes across Washington State. First, we relate Douglas-fir growth to climatic limitation and suggest that where Douglas-fir is currently water-limited, growth is likely to decline due to increased summer water deficit. Second, we use existing analyses of climatic controls on tree species biogeography to demonstrate that by the mid twenty-first century,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Prescribed fires as ecological surrogates for wildfires: A stream and riparian perspective
Year: 2010
Forest managers use prescribed fire to reduce wildfire risk and to provide resource benefits, yet little information is available on whether prescribed fires can function as ecological surrogates for wildfire in fire-prone landscapes. Information on impacts and benefits of this management tool on stream and riparian ecosystems is particularly lacking. We used a beyond-BACI (Before, After, Control, Impact) design to investigate the effects of a prescribed fire on a stream ecosystem and compared these findings to similar data collected after wildfire. For 3 years after prescribed fire treatment…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The fire pulse: wildfire stimulates flux of aquatic prey to terrestrial habitats driving increase in riparian consumers
Year: 2010
We investigated the midterm effects of wildfire (in this case, five years after the fire) of varying severity on periphyton, benthic invertebrates, emerging adult aquatic insects, spiders, and bats by comparing unburned sites with those exposed to low severity (riparian vegetation burned but canopy intact) and high severity (canopy completely removed) wildfire. We observed no difference in periphyton chlorophyll a or ash-free dry mass among different burn categories but did observe significantly greater biomass of benthic invertebrates in both high severity burned and unburned reaches versus…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Response of antelope bitterbrush to repeated prescribed burning in Central Oregon ponderosa pine forests
Year: 2009
Antelope bitterbrush is a dominant shrub in many interior ponderosa pine forests in the western United States. How it responds to prescribed fire is not well understood, yet is of considerable concern to wildlife and fire managers alike given its importance as a browse species and as a ladder fuel in these fire-prone forests. We quantified bitterbrush cover, density, and biomass in response to repeated burning in thinned ponderosa pine forests. Low- to moderate-intensity spring burning killed the majority of bitterbrush plants on replicate plots. Moderately rapid recovery of bitterbrush…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Burned landscapes of southwestern Oregon: what's in it for Northern Spotted Owls?
Year: 2008
Northern spotted owls are known to spend time in areas burned by wildfire, but there has been little scientific investigation of how and why they use these landscapes. A trio of wildfires in southwestern Oregon during the summers of 2001 and 2002 burned through dozens of documented spotted owl territories, providing a rare opportunity to study many important aspects of how these raptors respond to wildfire in dry forest ecosystems. For this project researchers used radio telemetry and demographic surveys to investigate habitat selection, home range size, occupancy, productivity and survival…
Publication Type: Report
Postfire woodpecker foraging in salvage-logged and unlogged forests of the Sierra Nevada
Year: 2008
In forests, high-severity burn patches — wherein most or all of the trees are killed by fire — often occur within a mosaic of low- and moderate-severity effects. Although there have been several studies of postfire salvage-logging effects on bird species, there have been few studies of effects on bird species associated with high-severity patches in forests that have otherwise burned at lower severities. From 2004 to 2006, we investigated the foraging presence or absence of three woodpecker species, the Black-backed (Picoides arcticus), Hairy (P. villosus), and White-headed (P. albolarvatus)…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Citizen-Agency Interactions in Planning and Decisionmaking After Large Fires
Year: 2007
This report reviews the growing literature on the concept of agency-citizen interactions after large wildfires. Because large wildfires have historically occurred at irregular intervals, research from related fields has been reviewed where appropriate. This issue is particularly salient in the West where excess fuel conditions indicate that the large wildfires occurring in many states are expected to continue to be a major problem for forest managers in the coming years. This review focuses on five major themes that emerge from prior research: contextual considerations, barriers and obstacles…
Publication Type: Government Report