Forest fires are increasing across the American West due to climate warming and fire suppression. Accelerated snow melt occurs in burned forests due to increased light transmission through the canopy and decreased snow albedo from deposition of light-absorbing impurities.
The South-Central Oregon Adaptation Partnership (SCOAP) was developed to identify climate change issues relevant for resource management on federal lands in south-central Oregon (Deschutes National Forest, Fremont-Winema National Forest, Ochoco National Forest, Crooked River National Grassland, Crater Lake National Park).
We reviewed forest management in the mountainous regions of several northwestern states and California in the United States and how it has impacted current issues facing these forests. We focused on the large-scale activities like fire suppression and logging which resulted in landscape level changes.
Before the advent of intensive forest management and fire suppression, western North American forests exhibited a naturally occurring resistance and resilience to wildfires and other disturbances. Resilience, which encompasses resistance, reflects the amount of disruption an ecosystem can withstand before its structure or organization qualitatively shift to a different basin of attraction.
To develop effective long-term strategies, natural resource managers need to account for the projected effects of climate change as well as the uncertainty inherent in those projec- tions. Vegetation models are one important source of projected climate effects.
Boundary organizations facilitate two-way, sustained interaction and communication between research and practitioner spheres, deliver existing science, and develop new, actionable scientific information to address emerging social–ecological questions applicable to decision-making.
Background: Few studies have examined post-fire vegetation recovery in temperate forest ecosystems with Landsat time series analysis.
The increasing frequency and severity of fire and drought events have negatively impacted the capacity and success of reforestation efforts in many dry, western U.S. forests.
Environmental change is accelerating in the 21st century, but how multiple drivers may interact to alter forest resilience remains uncertain. In forests affected by large high-severity disturbances, tree regeneration is a resilience linchpin that shapes successional trajectories for decades. We modeled stands of two widespread western U.S. conifers, Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var.
This is the executive summary of a three-volume science synthesis that addresses various ecological and social concerns regarding management of federal forests encompassed by the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP). Land managers with the U.S. Forest Service provided questions that helped guide preparation of the synthesis.