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Electric utilities in the US have initiated forestry projects to conserve energy and to o€set carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. In 1995, 40 companies raised US$2.5 million to establish the non-pro®t UtiliTree Carbon Company which is now sponsoring eight projects representing a mix of rural tree planting, forest preservation, forest management and research e€orts at both domestic (Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Oregon) and international sites (Belize and Malaysia). The projects include extensive external veri®cation. Such forestry projects Ð properly documented, monitored and veri®ed Ð should be a component of domestic and international strategies to address greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, due to GHG bene®ts,...
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Synopsis: Using multi-scale seasonal models, this study explored how broad scale landscape context and local resource heterogeneity influenced local resource selection among threatened forest-dwelling woodland caribou in southern Quebec. Caribou consistently avoided roads, however researchers identified thresholds in road proximity effects. The threshold distance at which caribou avoid roads is 1.25 km for active roads and 0.75 km from derelict roads. Open lichen woodlands were an important cover type for caribou during winter and spring, whereas deciduous forests, wetlands, and even young disturbed stands became important during calving and summer. Landscape cover type and amount explained more variation in habitat...
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Final Report - Executive Summary: This final project report is prepared to summarize the research project titled “Assessing evapotranspiration rate changes for proposed restoration of the forested uplands of the Desert Landscape Conservation Cooperatives (LCC)” for the Desert LCC of the Bureau of Reclamation as a requirement for closing out the project. This report includes the scope of work, summary of research project, results, and conclusions.Among all of the components of the terrestrial water cycle, evapotranspiration (ET) consumes the largest amount of water. Accurate estimation of ET is very important to understand the influence of ET to the hydrologic response of recharge and runoff processes in the water...
Categories: Data, Publication; Types: Citation, Map Service, OGC WFS Layer, OGC WMS Layer, OGC WMS Service; Tags: 2012, ATMOSPHERE, ATMOSPHERE, ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR, ATMOSPHERIC WATER VAPOR, All tags...
Wildfire refugia are forest patches that are minimally-impacted by fire and provide critical habitats for fire-sensitive species and seed sources for post-fire forest regeneration. Wildfire refugia are relatively understudied, particularly concerning the impacts of subsequent fires on existing refugia. We opportunistically re-visited 122 sites classified in 1994 for a prior fire refugia study, which were burned by two wildfires in 2012 in the Cascade mountains of central Washington, USA. We evaluated the fire effects for historically persistent fire refugia and compared them to the surrounding non-refugial forest matrix. Of 122 total refugial (43 plots) and non-refugial (79 plots) sites sampled following the 2012...
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Conclusions: Report presents a framework for assessing the condition of Southern Alberta’s natural assets and their ability to provide ecosystem goods and services. Measurable indicators of ecosystem services, including broad and fine scale landscape indicators, were also distilled from a literature review. Thresholds/Learnings: Wetland cover should be maintained at >15% for watersheds with high potential for phosphorus loading & eutrophication. Impervious cover should be maintained at or below 25% in heavily urbanizing watersheds. Synopsis: This report develops a framework for assessing the condition of Southern Alberta’s natural assets and their resulting ability to provide ecosystem goods and services. The...
Conclusions:Report presents draft outcomes, indicators, and targets for the Red Deer River Basin in three topic areas: wetlands, riparian areas, and land use. Targets established were based on a detailed literature review, combined with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) queries of existing conditions.Thresholds/Learnings:Specific thresholds for the region include: wetland cover should comprise >7.5% of the watershed; peatland cover should comprise > 6.0% in the upper headwaters; 82% of all riparian areas (variable width) in the watershed should have perennial vegetation cover; 97% of all riparian areas (variable width) in the Upper Headwaters should have perennial vegetation cover
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Conclusions: Caribou subpopulation persistence and landscape occupancy depends highly on the degree of forest cover, cover type, and distance from human presence. Thresholds/Learnings: Synopsis: This study evaluates factors influencing the persistence and landscape occupancy of caribou subpopulations in southern British Columbia. Data from 235 radio-collared caribou across 13 subpopulations were used to derive a landscape occupancy index. The index was analyzed against 33 landscape variables including, land cover, terrain, climate, and human influence. At the metapopulation level, the persistence of subpopulations correlated with the extent of wet climate conditions and the distribution of old forests and alpine...
Eastern spruce-fir forest ecosystems are among the most vulnerable to climate change within the conterminous US. The goal of this project was to develop tools to identify refugia sites most likely to support spruce-fir forest and its associated high-priority obligate spruce-fir bird species over the long-term under projected climate change scenarios. Specific research objectives included: (1) producing high-resolution (temporal and spatial) projections of spruce-fir forests, including stand characteristics like structure and composition; (2) estimating future changes in the distribution, productivity, and stand characteristics of the spruce-fir forest type due to potential changes in climate; (3) comparing the distribution...
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Synopsis: The goal of this study was to examine contaminant loadings associated with stormwater runoff from recently burned areas in urban fringe areas of southern California, to derive regional patterns of runoff and contaminant loadings in this context. Postfire stormwater runoff was sampled from five wildfires that each burned between 115 and 658 km2 of natural open space between 2003 and 2009. The area is characterized by classic Mediterranean climate conditions of relatively mild to cool wet winter and warm to hot dry summers. Between two and five storm events were sampled per site over the first one to two years following the fires for basic constituents, metals, nutrients, total suspended solids, and polycyclic...
Conclusions:Chemical concentrations, turbidity, changes in microclimate, and sediment production were affected to varying degrees by forest harvesting. No significant differences were found between pre-harvest and post-harvest concentrations except for calcium which was 5 times higher and sodium which was 20 times higher in the harvested watersheds. Concentrations declined over the 3 year post-harvest span.Turbidity and suspended sediment increased with road construction but declined rapidly to nearly background levels after 2 years. Air temperature increased after harvesting in all of the smaller watersheds but stream temperature was not affected.Thresholds/Learnings:
Whenever a neighborhood or community group objects to a proposed development in their area, someone questions whether the objections are part of a NIMBY , or "Not in My Backyard" pattern of responses. According to past studies, one characteristic of a typical NIMBY syndrome is a lack of trust in project sponsors or experts. Most researchers argue that distrust leads to the NIMBY syndrome. Margolis (1996), however, argues that opposition to a proposed development may cause distrust. In this article, we investigate opposition to offshore oil development in California using focusing groups of local political activists on both sides of the issue. Previous research has largely ignored project supporters when studying...
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The percent tree canopy layer quantifies per pixel tree canopy fraction as a continuous variable from 1 to 100 percent. The file is an 8 Bit continuous data file that will contain values from 0 to 255 when displayed in a software package. The value of '127' is a 'No Data' value applied to areas outside of the modeled percent tree canopy extent. This dataset was derived from the following source: - The Multi-Resolution Land Cover Consortium (MRLC) National Land Cover Dataset (NLCD), last updated in 2001. For more information on the MRLC visit: http://www.mrlc.gov/
Soil moisture strongly controls the uptake of atmospheric methane by limiting the diffusion of methane into the soil, resulting in a negative correlation between soil moisture and methane uptake rates under most non-drought conditions. However, little is known about the effect of water stress on methane uptake in temperate forests during severe droughts. We simulated extreme summer droughts by exclusion of 168 mm (2001) and 344 mm (2002) throughfall using three translucent roofs in a mixed deciduous forest at the Harvard Forest, Massachusetts, USA. The treatment significantly increased CH4 uptake during the first weeks of throughfall exclusion in 2001 and during most of the 2002 treatment period. Low summertime...
During the last years, the preservation of the atmospheric environment has played an increasingly important role in society. The Diesel engine can be considered an environmentally friendly engine because of its low consumption and the subsequent carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions reduction. However, in the near future it will face strong restrictive emission standards, which demand that the current nitrogen oxides (NOx) and soot emissions are halved. To comply with these restrictions new combustion concepts are emerging, such as PCCI (premixed charge compression ignition), in which the fuel burns in premixed conditions. Combustion noise is thus deteriorated and consequently end-users could be reluctant to drive vehicles...
The recovery plan for the Mexican spotted owl (Strix occidentalis lucida) recommended protection of owl nesting and roosting habitat. Descriptions of rnicrohabitat (less than or equal to-0.04 ha) characteristics associated with suitable nesting sites have been limited for the area of pine-oak forest occupied by this species in Arizona, USA. Therefore, we studied Mexican spotted owl habitat on a 585-km(2) study area on the Coconino Plateau near Flagstaff, Arizona. Mexican spotted owls nested primarily in mature (greater than or equal to45.7-cm diameter at breast height dbh) Gambel oak (Quercus gambelii; 40%) and ponderosa pine (Pines ponderosa; 37%) trees. We examined a plausible set of a priori models using both...
Climate change has altered the environment in which forests grow, and climate change models predict more severe alterations to come. Forests have already responded to these changes, and the future temperature and precipitation scenarios are of foremost concern, especially in the mountainous western United States, where forests occur in the dry environments that interface with grasslands. The objective of this study was to understand the trade-offs between temperature and water controls on these forested sites in the context of available climate projections. Three temperature and precipitation scenarios from IPCC AR4 AOGCMs ranging in precipitation levels were input to the process model Biome-BGC for key forested...
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Conclusions: Although there was not a detectable decrease in bird communitiy species richness resulting from experimental forest fragmentation, community structure was altered, and maintaining connections between fragments significantly mitigated these effects. Thresholds/Learnings: Synopsis: This study examined the effects of forest fragmentation on the richness, diversity, turnover, and abundance of breeding bird communities in old boreal mixed-wood forest by creating experimental forest fragments of 1, 10, 40, and 100 ha. Connected fragments were linked by 100 m wide buffer strips. The study detected no significant change in species richness as a result of forest harvesting, except in the 1 ha connected fragments...
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The purpose of this paper is to quantify climatic controls on the area burned by fire in different vegetation types in the Western United States. We demonstrate that wildfire area burned (WFAB) in the American West was controlled by climate during the 20th century (1916-2003). Persistent ecosystem-specific correlations between climate and WFAB are grouped by vegetation type (ecoprovinces). Most mountainous ecoprovinces exhibit strong year-of-fire relationships with low precipitation, low Palmer drought severity index (PDSI), and high temperature. Grass- and shrub-dominated ecoprovinces had positive relationships with antecedent precipitation or PDST. For 1977-2003, a few climate variables explain 33 to 87 percent...
Throughout the world, forests cover mountain slopes only up at a certain elevation. Above that level, trees become scattered. Higher up, no trees are found. The level where the forest ends, called the forest line or timberline, is higher in tropical areas than in colder regions, suggesting that cold climate conditions prevent forests from growing at higher elevations. On tropical island mountains, such as those in the Hawaiian Islands, the forest line is found at a lower elevation than we would expect based on the temperature. This leads us to suspect that some factor other than temperature, such as low rainfall, might be controlling the level of forest lines on these tropical islands. In this project, we sought...
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Conclusions: Edge structure affects movement patterns in chickadee flocks. Flocks tend to move parallel to forest edges. Thresholds/Learnings: Synopsis: During a two-year study of chickadee flocks in a fragmented agricultural landscape near Edmonton, Alberta, researchers tested the degree to which flocks responded to forest boundaries based on changes in vegetation, foraging sites, and edge structure near these boundaries. The results indicate that sharp forest boundaries (edges) acted strongly as movement corridors for birds, encouraging flocks to move parallel (within 75 m) to forest edges.
map background search result map search result map Climate and wildfire area burned in western U.S. ecoprovinces, 1916–2003 Percent Canopy Cover Are boreal birds resilient to forest fragmentation? An experimental study of short-term community responses. Understanding avian responses to forest boundaries: a case study with chickadee winter flocks. Factors influencing the dispersion and fragmentation of endangered mountain caribou populations Ecosystem Goods and Services Southern Alberta Assessment of Natural Asset Condition Assessing the influence of resource co-variates at multiple spatial scales: an application to forest-dwelling caribou faced with intensive human activity. Stormwater contaminant loading following southern California wildfires Report and Publications: Assessing Evapotranspiration Rate Changes for Proposed Restoration of the Forested Uplands of the DLCC Understanding avian responses to forest boundaries: a case study with chickadee winter flocks. Are boreal birds resilient to forest fragmentation? An experimental study of short-term community responses. Assessing the influence of resource co-variates at multiple spatial scales: an application to forest-dwelling caribou faced with intensive human activity. Factors influencing the dispersion and fragmentation of endangered mountain caribou populations Ecosystem Goods and Services Southern Alberta Assessment of Natural Asset Condition Report and Publications: Assessing Evapotranspiration Rate Changes for Proposed Restoration of the Forested Uplands of the DLCC Stormwater contaminant loading following southern California wildfires Percent Canopy Cover Climate and wildfire area burned in western U.S. ecoprovinces, 1916–2003