Research Database
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5
Managing Forests and Fire in Changing Climates
Year: 2013
With projected climate change, we expect to face much more forest fi re in the coming decades. Policymakers are challenged not to categorize all fires as destructive to ecosystems simply because they have long flame lengths and kill most of the trees within the fire boundary. Ecological context matters: In some ecosystems, high-severity regimes are appropriate, but climate change may modify these fire regimes and ecosystems as well. Some undesirable impacts may be avoided or reduced through global strategies, as well as distinct strategies based on a forest’s historical fire regime.
Publication Type: Report
Swiss Needle Cast
Year: 2013
Since the 1990s, there has been an epidemic of SNC affecting hundreds of thousands of acres of coastal Douglas-fir forests in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. This constitutes one of the largest foliage-disease epidemics of conifers in North America. SNC is also a localized problem in many inland areas of the west, especially in Montana, Idaho, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon.
Publication Type: Report
A Land Manager's Guide for Creating Fire-resistant Forests
Year: 2013
This publication provides an overview of how various silvicultural treatments affect fuel and fire behavior, and how to create fire-resistant forests. In properly treated, fire-resistant forests, fire intensity is reduced and overstory trees are more likely to survive than in untreated forests. Fire-resistant forests are not “fireproof” – under the right conditions, any forest will burn. Much of what we present here is pertinent to the drier forests of the Pacific Northwest, which have become extremely dense and fire prone.
Publication Type: Report
Regional constraints to biological nitrogen fixation in post-fire forest communities
Year: 2013
Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) is a key ecological process that can restore nitrogen (N) lost in wildfire and shape the pace and pattern of post-fire forest recovery. To date, there is limited information on how climate and soil fertility interact to influence different pathways of BNF in early forest succession. We studied asymbiotic (forest floor and soil) and symbiotic (the shrub Ceanothus integerrimus) BNF rates across six sites in the Klamath National Forest, California, USA. We used combined gradient and experimental phosphorus (P) fertilization studies to explore cross-site…
Publication Type: Journal Article