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Forest Service Report Highlights Restoration Progress Made Despite Growing Challenges
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The U.S. Forest Service has increased the pace and scale of forest restoration by nine percent since 2011, according to a report released today. The significant progress comes in the face of mounting challenges to the agency including record droughts, longer wildfire seasons and the increasing percentage of the agency’s budget spent fighting wildland fires.
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LANDFIRE Data Applications for Research in Fire Ecology, Forest Mgmt in California
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Brandon Collins presents the second in a series of webinars that LANDFIRE co-hosts with the California Fire Science Consortium. Collins is a USFS Research Forester based in Davis, CA, whose interests involve characterizing effects of fire and fuels treatments on forests at both the stand and landscape levels. He says, "My research intends to provide meaningful information to managers interested in improving forest resiliency and incorporating more natural fire-vegetation dynamics across landscapes."
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Videos and Webinars
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Global Vulnerability of Forests to Climate Change-Related Tree Mortality is Widely Underestimated
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Forests worldwide are vulnerable to growing risks of drought- and heat-induced tree mortality and forest die-off because of a rapidly warming Earth, according to just-published research in the scientific journal Ecosphere. The paper is an invited “ESA Centennial Paper” to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Ecological Society of America.
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Researchers Seek a Sneak Peek Into the Future of Forests
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In May 2015, scores of scientists from dozens of research institutions descended on a patch of forest in central North Carolina, taking samples of everything from ants and mites to other microbes – samples they hope will offer a glimpse into the future of forest ecosystems.
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Partnership benefits two Kentucky landscapes
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The Forecastle Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit dedicated to preserving areas of abundant biodiversity, today begins a new charitable partnership with The Nature Conservancy’s Kentucky Chapter.
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A Complex Landscape has both Vulnerabilities and Resilience to Climate Change
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Central Appalachian forests have been experiencing the effects of a changing climate for decades, and effects such as more heavy rainfall events, more drought, and more hot days are likely to continue, according to a new vulnerability assessment for the region by the U.S. Forest Service and many partners.
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Forest Service partnership effort improves health of America's Forest
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The U.S. Forest Service announced today that 1.45 million acres of America's forests and watersheds – an area larger than Delaware – are healthier as a result of collaborative partnerships to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires.
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A LIDAR‐DERIVED EVALUATION OF WATERSHED‐SCALE LARGE WOODY DEBRIS SOURCES AND RECRUITMENT MECHANISMS: COASTAL MAINE, USA
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In‐channel large woody debris (LWD) promotes quality aquatic habitat through sediment sorting, pool scouring and in‐stream nutrient retention and transport. LWD recruitment occurs by numerous ecological and geomorphic mechanisms including channel migration, mass wasting and natural tree fall, yet LWD sourcing on the watershed scale remains poorly constrained. We developed a rapid and spatially extensive method for using light detection and ranging data to do the following: (i) estimate tree height and recruitable tree abundance throughout a watershed; (ii) determine the likelihood for the stream to recruit channel‐spanning trees at reach scales and assess whether mass wasting or channel migration is a dominant recruitment mechanism; and (iii) understand the contemporary and future distribution of LWD at a watershed scale. We utilized this method on the 78‐km‐long Narraguagus River in coastal Maine and found that potential channel‐spanning LWD composes approximately 6% of the valley area over the course of the river and is concentrated in spatially discrete reaches along the stream, with 5 km of the river valley accounting for 50% of the total potential LWD found in the system. We also determined that 83% of all potential LWD is located on valley sides, as opposed to 17% on floodplain and terrace surfaces. Approximately 3% of channel‐spanning vegetation along the river is located within one channel width of the stream. By examining topographic and morphologic variables (valley width, channel sinuosity, valley‐ side slope) over the length of the stream, we evaluated the dominant recruitment processes along the river and often found a spatial disconnect between the location of potential channel‐spanning LWD and recruitment mechanisms, which likely explains the low levels of LWD currently found in the system. This rapid method for identification of LWD sources is extendable to other basins and may prove valuable in locating future restoration projects aimed at increasing habitat quality through wood additions.
key words: large woody debris; lidar; river restoration; habitat
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Climate Science Documents
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Changes in the Asian monsoon climate during 1700 –1850 induced by preindustrial cultivation
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Preindustrial changes in the Asian summer monsoon climate from the 1700s to the 1850s were estimated with an atmospheric general circulation model (AGCM) using historical global land cover/use change data reconstructed for the last 300 years. Extended cultivation resulted in a decrease in monsoon rainfall over the Indian subcontinent and southeastern China and an associated weakening of the Asian summer monsoon circulation. The precipitation decrease in India was marked and was consistent with the observational changes derived from examining the Himalayan ice cores for the concurrent period. Between the 1700s and the 1850s, the anthropogenic increases in greenhouse gases and aerosols were still minor; also, no long-term trends in natural climate variations, such as those caused by the ocean, solar activity, or volcanoes, were reported. Thus, we propose that the land cover/ use change was the major source of disturbances to the climate during that period. This report will set forward quantitative ex-amination of the actual impacts of land cover/use changes on Asian monsoons, relative to the impact of greenhouse gases and aerosols, viewed in the context of global warming on the interannual, decadal, and centennial time scales.
atmospheric water balance climate change historical land-cover change monsoon rainfall
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Climate Science Documents
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Effect of per-capita land use changes on Holocene forest clearance and CO2 emissions
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The centerpiece of the early anthropogenic hypothesis is the claim that humans took control of greenhouse-gas trends thousands of years ago because of emissions from early agriculture (Ruddiman, 2003, 2007). A common reaction to this claim is that too few people lived thousands of years ago to have had a major effect on either land use or greenhouse-gas concentrations. Implicit in this view is the notion that per-capita land clearance has changed little for millennia, but numerous field studies have shown that early per-capita land use was large and then declined as increasing population density led to more intensive farming. Here we explore the potential impact of changing per-capita land use in recent millennia and conclude that greater clearance by early agriculturalists could have had a disproportionately large impact on CO2 emissions.
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