Progress 10/01/10 to 09/30/15
Outputs Target Audience:Aside from scientific audience, we have focused on helping managers and policy makers understand and apply measures of resilience and ecological integrity. Specifically we have directed outreach to federal land managers including the US Forest Service (Stanislaus, Plumas, and El Dorado National Forests) and US National Park Service (Yosemite and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Parks). We have also extended our results to California state resource management agency decisions makes (e.g., California Air Resources Board, California Energy Commission, California Department of Forestry and Fire) as well as federal and stategovernment elected officials, industrial and nonindustrial timberland owners, and environmental NGO leaders. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The three publications dealing with forestry education published during this reporting period identified the need for changes in the forestry curriculum at most forestry schools of increasing the social science training foresters need to be successful in implementing adaptive management solutions in the real world, particularly with respect to communications and conflict resolution. Both graduate students and undergraduate students contributed to aspects of this project. Our efforts to quantify resilience in California's forests provided academic training opportunities to S. Cousins and M. Eitzel (graduate students). Specifically, Cousins lead the dead tree carbon research and included it as part of her PhD dissertation (first chapter). Similarly, Eitzel led the survival analysis and included the effort as part of PhD dissertation. Undergraduate students were proivided hands-on training and experience by workingas summer field technicians. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?In addition to journal papers (see Products)we invested some time in producing a paper for more general audiences. We receive a large number of media requests for information on fire, forest restoration, and resiliency. In the last year Stephens participated in > 30 media interviews. To assist in the delivery of fundamental fire information we worked with the American Institute of Biological Sciences to produce this on line paper that is open to everyone Stephens, S., M. North, and B. Collins. 2015. Large wildfires in forests: what can be done? Action Bioscience. (http://www.actionbioscience.org/environment/large_wildfires_in_forests_what_can_be_done.html) Gillessinvested considerable effort in the development of a Draft Vegetation Management Program Programmatic Environmental Impact Report that would create an adaptive management framework for such activities on more than 20 million acres of California wildlands and wildland urban interface areas. We have also collectively provided several talks/briefings to managers and policy makers. Notable examples follow: Stephens accepted an invitation to give a talk on fire and climate science at a White House event. This event was hosted by Vice President Joe Biden. It included senior administrators from the EPA, US Forest Service, FEMA, National Park Service, and Homeland Security. Was a brief talk on how climate change will impact the forests in the western US including structures. Stephens gave a talk on fire and forest restoration in California to the Public Policy Institute of California in San Francisco, CA. Stephens was an invited member to the California Spotted owl interim recommendations on changes to forest management working team by Region 5 of the US Forest Service. Provided input to the new interim guidelines. Stephens invited to work on a California Bill from Mario De Bernardo, Assembly Committee on Natural Resources from the California Assembly. The Bill was written to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration treatments on State and private lands in California. The legislation passed both the Senate and Assembly but was vetoed by Governor Brown. Battles provided a briefing to the California Board of Forestry in December 2014 on carbon storage trends in California's forests. Battles provided a briefing to the California Environmental Protection Agency in November 2014 on methods to assess greenhouse gas emissions from forests and other working lands. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts What was accomplished under these goals?
Our research has substantially contributed to our understanding of the baseline conditions (pre-European settlement) of the Sierra Nevada and to the effects of fires suppression on forest structure across the landscape. We have developed robust metrics of forest resilience and applied these concepts to the ecology and management of the Sierra Nevada. We have also developed innovative approaches (e.g.,adaptive management techniques)to teachmanagers and foresters how to build forest resilience. The impact of our work has been far reaching. As we noted, we have written a public brief about the role of large wildfires in the West and their threat to forest resilience with the American Institute for Biological Science.Our paper documenting carbon losses in California was featured in the national news (Washington Post, Wall Street Journal). Notably our work pointed out inconsistencies in our ability to track forest carbon and recommended a more synthetic approach to greenhouse gas accounting. This recommendation contributed to California's decision to form an interagency "Forest Carbon Accounting Team." Finally our efforts to re-imagine a forestry curriculum for the future will help educate the next generation of leaders and managers. Forest structure, fire and resilience.Throughout much of the drier, low- to mid-elevation coniferous forests in California fires historically burned at intensities that often left mature trees unaffected or scarred by fire, but seldom killed, especially for large trees. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, policies of fire exclusion, introduction of livestock grazing, and elimination of Native American ignitions greatly reduced fire frequencies in ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forests. With these changes many contemporary forests have substantially increased in their vulnerability to uncharacteristically severe fire, exhibited primarily through the creation of large high severity patches. These large patches, where most if not all of the trees are dead, can impede conifer tree regeneration and predispose them for repeated high severity fire and potentially, type conversion. As a result, many forest managers today are tasked increasing forest resiliency. Our project provided quantitative information on forest structure before logging and fire suppression at large spatial scales (> 15,000 ha) that has not been described in California. In our study we took advantage of early US Forest Service timber inventories taken in 1911 that were conducted on what was then the Kern National Forest (now part of the Sequoia National Forest). We compared this early inventory data to FIA data collected from the same area over the last decade. Forest structure was highly variable in 1911 and shrubs were found in 54% of transects. Total tree basal area ranged from 1 to 60 m2ha-1and tree density from 2 to 170 trees ha-1. Forest structure was divided into four groups: mixed conifer-high basal area (MC High BA), mixed conifer-average basal area (MC Ave BA), mixed conifer-average basal area-high shrubs (MC Ave BA Shrubs), and ponderosa pine (Pond Pine). The percentage of this 1911 landscape that experienced high severity fire was low and varied from 1-3% in mixed conifer forests and 4-6% in ponderosa pine forests. Comparing forest inventory data from 1911 to the present indicates that current forests have changed drastically, particularly in tree density, canopy cover, the density of large trees, dominance of white fir in mixed conifer forests, and the similarity of tree basal area in contemporary ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forests. Average forest canopy cover increased from 25-49% in mixed conifer forests, and from 12-49% in ponderosa pine forests from 1911 to the present; canopy cover in current forest types is similar but in 1911 mixed conifer forests had twice the canopy cover as ponderosa pine forests. Current forest restoration goals in the southern Sierra Nevada are often skewed toward the higher range of these historical values, which will limit the effectiveness of these treatments if the objective is to produce resilient forest ecosystems into the future. This information has been used in US Forest Service plan revisions in the Sequoia and Sierra National Forests. We have also shared this information on the Stanislaus National Forest where they are planning large scale restoration projects. Managers were very surprised at the character of the forests and how they were distributed spatially. Shrubs were much more common than expected. Percentage of high severity fire in mixed conifer and ponderosa pine forests was low and was not in agreement with other studies from Baker and Hansen in the area. The papers discuss why these differences exist and our research has been widely used in forest restoration efforts to increase resiliency. Measuring forest resilience.Two key measures of forest resilience include carbon storage and tree mortality. In the last year, we made progress in quantifying these metrics for Sierran conifer forests and using them to inform efforts to "manage for resilience." We produced a comprehensive evaluation of carbon losses and gains in forests across California from 2001 to 2010. We reported net losses of carbon from forests due to wildfires; slowing growth rates, and increases in mortality. In our report for the California Energy Commission, we produced the first carbon loss rates for standing dead trees in the vast Sierran conifer forest. When the measured changes in carbon density are applied to standing dead carbon stock estimates for California mixed conifer forests, the decay-adjusted estimates are 18% lower (3.7 TgC) than estimates that do not incorporate change due to decay. As part our AES research, we have developed the empirical basis to predictive tree survival based on population-wide factors. Declining tree survival is a complex, well-recognized problem, but studies have been largely limited to relatively rare old-growth forests or low-diversity systems, and to models which are species-aggregated or cannot easily accommodate yearly climate variables. We create survival models for a relatively diverse second-growth forest in the Sierra Nevada of California using a hierarchical state-space framework. We account for a mosaic of measurement intervals and random plot variation, and we directly include yearly stand development variables alongside climate variables and topographic proxies for nutrient limitation. Our model captures the expected dependence of survival on tree size. At the community level, stand development variables account for decreasing survival trends, but species-specific models reveal a diversity of factors influencing survival. Species time trends in survival do not always conform to existing theories of Sierran forest dynamics, and size relationships with survival differ for each species. Within species, low survival is concentrated in susceptible subsets of our population and single estimates of annual survival rates do not reflect this heterogeneity in survival. Ultimately only full population dynamics integrating these results with models of recruitment can address the potential for community shifts over time. Training foresters to successfully implement adaptive management solutions:The outcome of a major workshop on forestry education held on the Berkeley campus provided useful guidance to the Berkeley faculty engaged in redesigning the forestry curriculum at that institution to recognize the importance of increasing the social science skill set of foresters, particularly with respect to communications and conflict resolution, if they are to be successful in implementing adaptive management solutions to problems like fire resilience in the Sierra Nevada. The proceedings of the workshop were published as a special issue of the Journal of Forestry to provide a framework for other forestry schools to evaluate their own forestry curricula.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Stephens, S.L., Lydersen, J.M., Collins, B.M., Fry, D.L., Meyer, M.D. 2015. Historical and current landscape-scale ponderosa pine and mixed-conifer forest structure in the Southern Sierra Nevada. Ecosphere 6(5) art 79
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Collins, B.M., Lydersen, J.M., Everett, R.G., Fry, D.L., Stephens, S.L. 2015. Novel characterization of landscape-level variability in historical vegetation structure. Ecological Applications 25: 1167-1174
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Seidl, R., T.A. Spies, D.L. Peterson, S.L. Stephens, and J.A. Hicke. 2015. Searching for resilience: addressing the impacts of changing disturbance regimes on forest ecosystem services. Journal of Applied Ecology DOI: 10.1111/1365-2664.12511
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Hessburg, P.F., Churchill, D.J., Larson, A.J., Haugo, R.D., Miller, C., Spies, T.A., North, M.P, Povak, N.A., Belote, R.T., Singleton, P.H., Gaines, W.L., Keane, R.E., Aplet, G.H., Stephens, S.L., Morgan, P., Bisson, P.A., Rieman, B.E., Salter, R.B., Reeves, G.H. 2015. Restoring fire-prone Inland Pacific landscapes: seven core principles. Landscape Ecology DOI 10.1007/s10980-015-0218-0.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Gilless, J.K. 2015. The Berkeley Summit -- Looking Forward to the Future for Forestry Education. Journal of Forestry 113(6):
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Gilless, J.K. 2015. The Berkeley Summit. Journal of Forestry 113(6): 587591.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Gilless, J.K. 2015. UC Berkeley's Forestry Program Celebrates 100 Years. California Agriculture 69(1): 4.
- Type:
Books
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Gilless, J.K., Guy, A.B., Johnson, E., Rustad, B., Seltenrich, N., Standiford, R., Stangenberger, A.S., Stewart, W.C., and R. York. 2014. A Century of Cal Forestry 1914-2014. University of California, Berkeley. 56 pages.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Gonzalez, P., J.J. Battles, B.M. Collins, T. Robards, and D.S. Saah. 2015. Aboveground live carbon stock changes of California wildland ecosystems, 2001-2010. Forest Ecology and Management 348: 68-77.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Eitzel, M., J.J. Battles, R.A. York, and P. de Valpine. 2015. Can't see the trees for the forest: complex factors influence survival in a temperate second-growth forest. Ecosphere 6:1-17.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2015
Citation:
Battles, J.J., S.J.M. Cousins, and J. E. Sanders. 2015. Carbon dynamics and greenhouse gas emissions of standing dead trees in California mixed conifer forests. California Energy Commission. Publication number: CEC-500-2016-001.
|
Progress 10/01/13 to 09/30/14
Outputs Target Audience: From John Battles: Aside from scientific audience, I have focused on helping managers and policy makers understand and apply measures of resilience and ecological integrity. From Scott Stephens: My project is designed to provide information to scientists and fire and forest managers. Work has focused on helping fire and forest managers understand the trade-offs between different fuel reduction techniques, including managed wildfire, and the policy needed to implement them at larger spatial scales. I am the leader (Principal Investigator) of the California Fire Science Consortium (http://cafiresci.org/). This Consortium is a network of fire science researchers, managers, and outreach specialists tasked with improving the availability and understanding of fire science and management knowledge. This includes increasing communication between fire researchers, managers, policymakers, tribes, landowners, and other stakeholders. The Consortium presents webinars, small conferences, and field trips across CA to bring fire science to managers. It also summarizes current research into Research Briefs that are available to all on our web site. This past year we engaged > 2000 fire and forest managers in this project. I also gave invited seminars on fire and forest management in CA including leading a field tour of the southern Sierra Nevada to a group from the CA State Bar Conference, USDA SENIOR ADVISOR FOR ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE Robert Bonnie and Meryl Raymar Harrell, Special Assistant to the Under Secretary, about fire and forest management in California, gave invited testimony to the California ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESROURCES on Fuel Treatments on CA Forestlands, and participated in an invited meeting with US Congressman Garamendi in Davis, CA, to discuss a Bill that he is working on regarding fire and forest restoration. From Keith Gilless: Served as the Chair of the California State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, working to incorporate research findings into the elements of the California Public Resources Code dealing with the fire safety elements of county and municipal safety plans. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? From John Battles: our efforts to quantify carbon storage in California's forests and rangelands provided academic training opportunities to S. Spiegel and N. van Doorn (graduate students). Specifically, Spiegel conducted a critical review of the literature and existing databases on grasslands with the goal of quantifying variation in carbon storage and flux. For the shrub dominated lands of California, van Doorn conducted a similar analysis. Both students gained experience with building an integrated database from a variety of sources. Students were also led through the process of assigning uncertainty to estimates derived from multiple sources. From Scott Stephens: The effort on investigating the effects of fuels treatments provided academic training to K. Wilken, A. Kramer, K. Shieve, and C. Tubbesing (graduate students) and L. Aney-Chiono (post-doctoral scholar). Specifically, Wilken is working on how managed wildfire in the Sierra Nevada and prescribed fire and mechanical fuels treatments impact post fire understory communities in mixed conifer forests and chaparral. Kramer is working on developing new techniques to analyze lidar data to estimate areas with high fire hazards from ladder fuels in ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forests in California. Shieve is researching what factors lead to successful conifer regeneration after large, high severity fires and what happens when areas burned with high severity reburn with high severity in < 2 decades. Tubbesing is a 1st year student who will begin her research program this summer and is currently developing ideas. L. Aney-Chiono is working in mixed conifer forests investigating how landscape fuel treatments could reduce fire behavior and effects and carbon emissions. From Keith Gilless: the research on this project provided academic training opportunities forone graduate student. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? From John Battles: 1. Publications - listed above 2. Talks/Briefings a. I gave an invited talk in October 2013 for the symposium: Working for Conservation: Active Engagement in Forest and Woodland Sustainability. The talk was titled: "Climate change and resilience in Sierran forests. Workshop audience included approximately 140 resource managers, foresters, and scientists. b. In June 2014, I briefed staff from the California Air Resources Board, California Environmental Protection Agency, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and the California Energy Commissions regarding the contribution of wildfire to the reduction in carbon storage observed for California's forests and rangelands between 2001 and 2008. c. In August 2014, I organized a contributed session at the Ecological Society of America Annual Meeting regarding the application of adaptive management to solve resource management issues. We invited 10 speakers to share their insights regarding the efficacy of adaptive management as a tool to improve resource management while also engaging a multitude of stakeholders. From Scott Stephens: Publications listed under Proudct. From Keith Gilless: Through public workshops held for California legislative staff and employees of California state agencies, including CalFire, the Air Resources Board, and the California Public Utilities Commission held at Blodgett Forest Research Station. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We will continue to develop the tools needed to quantity forest resilience with an emphasis on the role of wildfire as an agent of change andthe ecological effects of fuels treatments and tree population response to fire and other disturbances. New research is planned to tie forest restoration treatments and the possible positive changes in forest hydrology. We will continue to develop information needed tomanage wildfire. New research has recently been funded to tie forest restoration treatments and the possible positive changes in forest hydrology and carbon sequestration. The primary objective would be to characterize the hydrological and vegetation dynamics associated with a long-established fire use programs. In contrast to infrequent, large, high severity wildfire such as the recent Rim Fire that burned over 100,000 ha in the central Sierra Nevada, a natural lightning-ignited fire regime dominated by low- and moderate- severity fires has been restored in Yosemite since 1974. The central question that we are working on: Is there evidence for a potential win-win-win scenario in which fire regime restoration both promotes landscape scale ecosystem resilience/carbon sequestration and leads to increased water yield coupled with more favorable timing of stream discharge and retention of water quality? This proposal was recently funded by the US Joint Fire Sciences Program with co-PI's John Battles, Maggi Kelly, and Sally Thompson from UCB. We will also continue to use data from reserve plots andfire and fire surrogate study plots at Blodgett Experimental Forest to determine the effects of fire on the population dynamics of several key species, including Abies concolor (white fir), Calocedrus decurrens (incense cedar), Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas fir), Pinus lambertiana (sugar pine), and Pinus ponderosa (ponderosa pine).
Impacts What was accomplished under these goals?
From John Battles: Measuring forest resilience. During the last decade, the mixed conifer forest of the Sierra Nevada has grown at a net rate of approximately 0.6%/yr. Over the same time, annual mortality increased by 1.5%/yr. Together these rates suggest a decline in forest health. This decline has been variously attributed to increases in tree competition, rising climatic moisture deficits, and exposure to chronic air pollution. At the same time, the Sierran mixed conifer are exposed to an unprecedented risk of severe wildfires. For example, our research on carbon storage and flux in California forests and rangeland found that 2/3 of carbon emissions were attributed to losses from wildfires between 2001 and 2008. In response to these threats, forest fuel treatments have been designed to both modify fire behavior and improve the health of trees by reducing competition. Proposed treatments include mechanical thinning, mastication, and prescribed fire. To date robust methods exist to evaluate the effectiveness of fuel treatments on wildfire behavior. In contrast, the impact on forest health has proven more difficult to assess. From a theoretical perspective, tree growth is linked to tree survival. As part our AES research, we have developed the empirical basis to apply this theory to the dominant tree species in the Sierran mixed conifer forest. Specifically we have built predictive models of survival based on a tree's growth history. From a representative sample of the population, we use these models and robust statistical inference to develop population vulnerability profiles. These profiles estimate the expected annual survival probabilities for trees in the population. Changes in these profiles are quantitative representations of forest health. We used this technique to evaluate the response of tree populations to the fuel treatments applied in Sierran mixed conifer forest at Blodgett Research Forest Station. The experiment at Blodgett was part of the nationwide Fire and Fire Surrogate Study. We argue that one measure of forest resilience is the health of the constituent trees with survival probability a powerful indicator of health (high survival probability = good health). Using growth records collected seven years after the fuel treatments, we constructed vulnerability profiles for the common species and compared the response across treatments. We found that treatments that included prescribed fire has vulnerability profiles with lower median survival than the control. We also found higher median survival in the plots where only mechanical treatments were applied. The impact of work on wildfire impacts on carbon dynamics and forest resilience can be measured in two ways. When California updated its Scoping Plan for the meeting greenhouse gas emissions targets in Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32) , the plan identifies the need to address emissions related to wildfire and declines in forest growth. The basis for this recommendation was our report. Second, our results of improved health related to mechanical fuel treatments provided direct evidence that treatment primarily designed to modify fire behavior also can improve forest health. From a forest resilience perspective, mechanical thinning reduces both hazards associated with wildfire and improves the survival of the remaining trees. From Scott Stephens: During this reporting period I have engaged some top level policy makers related to forest and fire policy and management. My presentation to the California ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE ON NATURAL RESROURCES on Fuel Treatments let to several questions on how the State can get more involved in forest restoration. I was contacted after the hearing my Assembly Staff to get copies of my research papers and to answer additional questions. The State legislature in CA is getting more active in the management of forests, including discussions on federal lands. My meeting with US Congressman Garamendi to discuss a Bill that he is working on regarding fire and forest restoration was also impactful. Congressman McClintock had engaged Congressman Garamendi on a bill in response to the 2013 Rim Fire in the Sierra Nevada. McClintock wanted a Bill to force a set level of salvage logging and tree planting. My view was this was not a good way to proceed for several reasons. After some discussion Congressman Garamendi understood more of the issues and eventually did not support McClintock's Bill. The field impacts of the outreach efforts of the California Fire Science Consortium are large. This has become the largest outreach effort on fire and California ecosystems in the state. We continue to attract new people to the Consortium and to innovate. We heard from users that longer synthesis papers on important topics would be useful so have prioritized them more. We also heard that mangers wanted more field trips to important sites where questions could be asked of researchers and a dialog could occur. We have done more of these as well. From Keith Gilless: Analysis of the evolution of state funding mechanisms for performing fuels management work in California documented the shifting pattern of reliance on state and federal direct appropriations to bond funding and finally to special fees assessed on the habitable structures that would be protected by such activities on areas of "State Responsibility" for fire management, i.e., the structures on private lands outside incorporated communities. This shift has resulted in a changing state/federal dynamic with respect to which agencies are leading efforts to address dangerous fuel conditions in the Sierra Nevada.
Publications
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Collins, B.M., A.J. Das, J. J. Battles, D. L. Fry, K. D. Krasnow, and S. L. Stephens. 2014. Beyond reducing fire hazard: fuel treatment impacts on overstory tree survival. Ecological Applications 24: 1870-1886.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Lydersen, J.M., B. M. Collins, C.B. Dow, P. Gonzalez, C. M. Ewell, D. S. Saah, A.L. Reiner, J. Fites and J.J. Battles. 2014. Using field data to assess model predictions of surface and ground fuel consumption by wildfire in coniferous forests of California. Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences 119:223-235.
- Type:
Websites
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2014
Citation:
Battles, J.J., P. Gonzalez, T. Robards, B.M. Collins, and D.S. Saah. 2014. Final Report: California Forest and Rangeland Greenhouse Gas Inventory Development. California Air Resources Board Agreement 10-778. http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/apr/past/10-778.pdf
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Pennypacker, C.R., M.K. Jakubowski, M. Kelly, M. Lampton, C. Schmidt, S. Stephens, and R. Tripp. 2013. FUEGOFire Urgency Estimator in Geosynchronous OrbitA proposed early-warning fire detection system. Remote Sensing 5(10):5173-5192.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Jakubowski, M., Q. Guo, B. Collins, S. Stephens, and M. Kelly. 2013. Predicting surface fuel models and fuel metrics using lidar and CIR imagery in a dense, mountainous forest. Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing 79(1):37-49.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Barros, A.M.G., J.M.C. Pereira, M.A. Moritz, and S.L. Stephens. 2013. Spatial Characterization of Wild?re Orientation Patterns in California. Forests (4):197-217.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Fry, D.L., and S.L. Stephens. 2013. Seed viability and female cone characteristics of mature knobcone pine trees. Western Journal of Applied Forestry 28(1):46-48.
|
Progress 01/01/13 to 09/30/13
Outputs Target Audience: In addition to the forest science research community, the target audiences for this project are forest managers (both public and private), cooperative extension personnel (particularly those associated with the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources), regulatory agencies and policy making boards (e.g., the California State Board of Forestry and Fire Protections), land management/fire service agencies (including CAL FIRE, the US Forest Service, The Bureau of Land Management, and tribal forestry organizations), environmental organizations, and households residing in high fire danger/wildland-urban interface areas. To reach these audiences, the principal investigators: 1) Served as leader of the California Fire Science Consortium (http://cafiresci.org/), an organization with the goal of facilitating connections between scientists and forest managers through webinars, field trips, and the synthesis of scientific papers. During the reporting period, the Consortium conducted two webinars on the ecological effects of forest fuel reduction treatments; 2) delivered seminars on this topic at meetings of the US Forest Service Region 5 Fire and Aviation Board of Directors, the Sierra-Cascades Dialog, the Santa Cruz Fire Safe Council, and the Rim Fire Restoration group. 2) Delivered the keynote address at the Southern Sierra Adaptation Workshop on, "Environmental stewardship in the era of global change: Status of focal resources in the southern Sierra Nevada." The audience for this workshop included approximately 165 resource managers, (park superintendents, forest supervisors), scientists, and environmental leaders. 3) Directed the Natural Resource Condition Assessment I for Sequoia Kings-Canyon National Park. 4) Served as the Chair of the California State Board of Forestry and Fire Protection, working to incorporate research findings into the elements of the California Public Resources Code dealing with the fire safety elements of county and municipal safety plans. 5) Organized and spoke at a conference on, “Working for conservation: Active Engagement in forest and woodland sustainability, for an audience of approximately 120 environmental and forestry leaders. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? The research on this project provided academic training opportunities for three graduate students and one post doctoral scholar. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest? Through publications,. testimony, and conference presentations such as the American Geophysical Union meetings and the Southern Sierra Adaptation Workshop.. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? We will continue to develop tools needed to quantify the ecological effects of fuels treatments and tree population response to fire and other disturbances. New research is planned to tie forest restoration treatments and the possible positive changes in forest hydrology. We will also continue to use data from reserve plots andfire and fire surrogate study plots at Blodgett Experimental Forest to determine the effects of fire on the population dynamics of several key species, including Abies concolor (white fir), Calocedrus decurrens (incense cedar), Pseudotsuga menziesii (Douglas fir), Pinus lambertiana (sugar pine), and Pinus ponderosa (ponderosa pine).
Impacts What was accomplished under these goals?
Forest and Fire Policy. Stephens was the lead on a Science Policy Forum titled ‘Managing forests and fire in changing climates’ where he and his co-authors put forward a framework to manage forests into the 21stcentury. With projected climate change, they anticipate much more forest fire 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 fi re 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. The resulting policy recommendations applicable to all forests include: 1) Landowners should follow “Firewise” guidelines for houses and other infrastructure to reduce losses of life and property in the urban-wildland interface; 2) Fire managers should avoid trying to uniformly blacken wildfire landscapes through burnout and mop-up operations, especially in burn interiors, to conserve biodiversity and key ecological processes; and 3) Land managers could anticipate changes using models of species distribution and ecological processes and should consider using assisted migration. They also suggested several distinct strategies based on a forest’s historical fire regime. Mitigation in forests with historically high frequency, low- to moderate-severity fire regimes: 1) Restore resilient forest structure similar to historical patterns that survived during past high-fire periods (and those anticipated in the future); and 2) Fund forest restoration. Public acceptance of treatments is increasing; the critical barrier is now cost. Treatment rates are far below what is needed for landscape resilience. Because the federal government has no jurisdiction in development policies in the privately owned urban-wildland interface, state and local jurisdictions could pay for fi re suppression in the interface. This would enable a significant increase in critical forest restoration funding and would probably reduce building in the interface. In forests with historically low-frequency, high-severity fire regimes, expect changes in forest type and age across the landscape and possibly manage to facilitate these changes. Some areas may even shift to a non-forest state, especially if trees cannot reestablish in a warmer, drier climate. Such changes will not necessarily be catastrophic, but there are no clear guidelines for increasing the resilience of these forest types—unlike for forests adapted to high-frequency, low- to moderate severity fire regimes—other than minimizing additional stresses from excessive grazing, recreation, and salvage logging. Stephens gave an invited policy talk on this subject in the US Senate conference rooms in Washington DC, provided the paper to all US Senators on this committee, and was invited to talk about the subject with US House of Representatives member John Garamendi in his office in Davis, California. Ecological Effects of Fuels Treatments. The effects of forest restoration treatments on bark beetle induced tree mortality is an important issue. Increased current use of fuel reduction treatments and there planned expansion in the near future makes this an important issue. We assessed tree mortality caused by bark beetles in a mixed-conifer forest in the central Sierra Nevada in response to fire and mechanical treatments. The treatments were: 1) no treatment; 2) prescribed fire; 3) mechanical (crown thinning-from-below followed by rotary mastication); and 4) mechanical followed by prescribed fire. Ponderosa pine mortality caused by the western pine beetle, sugar pine mortality caused by mountain pine beetle, and white fir mortality caused by the fir engraver beetle was assessed pre-treatments, one-year post-treatments, and three years’ post-treatments. Bark beetle caused mortality across all treatments for each tree species was less than 7%. Bark beetle-caused mortality of small and medium white firs increased in treatments that included fire, and bark beetle-caused mortality of medium size sugar pines was elevated in the fire only treatment compared with other treatments. Results indicated that mechanical treatments cause little risk of mortality to residual trees from bark beetles in the short term. The higher secondary mortality in the small and medium size white firs in both fire treatments can be considered a benefit in overly dense mixed conifer forests where the understory is dominated by shade-tolerant white firs. Measuring tree growth. Battles’ research estimated the diameter growth of white fir (Abies concolor) in the Sierra Nevada of California from forest inventory data, showing that estimating such a model is feasible in a Bayesian framework using readily available modeling tools. In this forest, white fir growth depends strongly on tree size, total plot basal area, and unexplained variation between individual trees. Plot-level resource supply variables (representing light, water, and nutrient availability) do not have a strong impact on inventory-size trees. This approach can be applied to other networks of permanent forest plots, leading to greater ecological insights on tree growth. Assessing Intact Forests in the Southern Sierra Nevada. Forests are the most common vegetation type in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks (SEKI). They account for a third of the area and almost half of the non-barren lands. Forests cycle carbon, water, and nutrients between the atmosphere and the terrestrial biosphere. Forests can also store these elements for varying lengths of time, up to thousands of years. Forests provide food and habitat for a host of organisms, from fungi to mammals. They provide soil stability, particularly important in the steep landscapes of the Sierra Nevada. Disturbances to forests, particularly fire, drought and pathogens, while natural, have repercussions for all the resources in the Parks that depend on forests. When disturbance patterns change due to human influence—for example, when fire frequency decreases because of fire suppression—it affects many disparate elements of the parks’ ecosystems that are linked with, or dependent on forests. Forest “ecological integrity” may vary significantly, but when it strays from known historic range and patterns, it is cause for concern. Measures of ecological integrity can provide valuable information for assessing ecosystem condition and management effectiveness. Thus, “ecological integrity” was used to assess condition in the forest ecosystems of Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Three aspects of forests make up ecological integrity. “Landscape structure”, “Forest structure and composition”, and “Ecosystem function". Battles’ research found that currently intact forests have high ecological integrity throughout the parks. However trend data suggests that intact forests may be deteriorating given their exposure to a host of stressors. The primary stressor is an altered fire regime --more than 40% of the intact forest is at risk. In addition, ozone pollution continues to injure pines along the western edge of parks. Drought stress related to climate change is implicated in the near doubling of annual tree mortality rate. Finally the exotic pathogen, blister rust, poses a series threat to the five-needled pines.
Publications
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Battles, J.J., D. S. Saah, T. Robards; S. Cousins, R. A. York and D. Larson. 2013. A natural resource condition assessment for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks: Appendix 12 intact forests. Natural Resource Report. NPS/SEKI/NRR2013/665.12. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado. Published Report-2195699.
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Battles, J.J., T. Moody and D. S. Saah. 2013. A natural resource condition assessment for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks: Appendix 21 altered fire regimes. Natural Resource Report. NPS/SEKI/NRR2013/665.21. National Park Service. Fort Collins, Colorado. Published Report-2195801.
- Type:
Book Chapters
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Castillo, F. and J.K. Gilless. 2013. Climate Change, Extreme Events and Migration: A Framework of Research. In Costa Rica in the Third Millennium: Proposals for the Reduction of Vulnerability. Adamson, Marcos and Castillo, Eds. Editorial Luz. San Jose, Costa Rica.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Collins, B.M., H.A. Kramer, K. Menning, C. Dillingham, D. Saah, P.A. Stine, and S.L. Stephens. 2013. Modeling hazardous fire potential within a completed fuel treatment network in the northern Sierra Nevada. Forest Ecology and Management 310:156166.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Eitzel, M., J.J. Battles, R.A. York, J. Knape, and P. de Valpine. 2013. Estimating tree growth models from complex forest monitoring data. Ecological Applications 23: 1288-1296.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Ful�, P.Z., T.W. Swetnam, P.M. Brown, D.A. Falk, D.L. Peterson, C.D. Allen, G.H. Aplet, M.A. Battaglia, D. Binkley, C. Farris, R.E. Keane, E.Q. Margolis, H. Grissino-Mayer, C. Miller, C.H. Sieg, C. Skinner, S.L. Stephens, and A. Taylor. 2013. Unsupported inferences of high severity fire in historical western United States dry forests: Response to Williams and Baker. Global Ecology and Biogeography. (doi: 10.1111/geb.12136)
- Type:
Other
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
National Park Service. 2013. A natural resource condition assessment for Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Natural Resource Report. Edited by C. Sydoriak, J.A. Panek, J.J.Battles, and K. R. Nydick. NPS/SEKI/NRR2013/665. Fort Collins, Colorado. Published Report-2195490.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Stark, D.L., D.L. Wood, A.J. Storer, and S.L. Stephens. 2013. Prescribed fire and mechanical thinning effects on bark beetle caused tree mortality in a mid-elevation Sierran mixed-conifer forest. Forest Ecology and Management 306:61-67.
- Type:
Journal Articles
Status:
Published
Year Published:
2013
Citation:
Stephens, S.L., J.K. Agee, P.Z Ful�, M.P. North, W.H. Romme, T.W. Swetnam, and M.G. Turner. 2013. Managing forests and fire in changing climates. Science 342:41-42.
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Progress 01/01/12 to 12/31/12
Outputs OUTPUTS: The preferential harvest of large-diameter trees, and land conversion over the past 150 years have changed fuel conditions over millions of hectares of US forests. These changes in forest structure have resulted in recent wildfires have tended to be larger and more severe, and this trend will continue in some forests as climates continue to warm. Given this scenario, it is easy to see why fuels management is increasingly used by managers in an effort to change the only factors in the fire behavior formula they can: the quantity and continuity of fuel. There are two general categories available to managers to reduce fire hazards: mechanical methods and prescribed fire (and their combination). However, forest managers have been so constrained by social, economic, and administrative issues that prescribed-fire use is low, especially in the western US. Surrogates, such as forest thinning and mastication have become more attractive, especially when forest managers can use such treatments to accomplish stand-structure goals similar to those obtained by prescribed fire. Until recently, however, we knew little about the possible unintended consequences that might arise from widespread application of fire-surrogate treatments in seasonally dry forests. The principle question addressed in this recent research is misleadingly simple: What components or processes are changed or lost, and with what effects, if fire surrogates such as cuttings and mechanical fuel treatments are used instead of fire or in combination with fire The difficulty of designing appropriate fire management programs is compounded by population growth and infrastructure development in rural areas. This is a particular problem for the managers of parks that have historically benefited from a buffer zone of undeveloped wildland vegetation outside their park boundaries. Development of these buffers presents an escalating challenge for managers looking to balance liability with a need to utilize prescribed fire. Central to the resilience of California's mixed conifer ecosystem is the shared dominance by its six major species with their diverse life history strategies. The heterogeneity in forest composition provides a measure of protection against catastrophic disturbances like fire and pest outbreaks. At the same time, fire suppression is directly contributing to the absence of pine regeneration as well as the risk of catastrophic fire. As tree density and canopy cover increases in the absence of fire, populations of shade-tolerant and fire sensitive species (white fir, Douglas-fir, and incense cedar) increase while the more shade intolerant conifers (e.g., ponderosa pine and sugar pine) decline. The result is a more homogenous forest in both structure and composition. This homogeneity reduces the inherent resilience of these ecosystems. To quantify the potential benefits and costs of a management plan that encourages pine regeneration, we assessed the effectiveness of gap-based approach to regenerate pine species and reduce surface fuels in multi-aged mixed conifer stands in the central Sierra Nevada. PARTICIPANTS: National Park Service U.S. Forest Service TARGET AUDIENCES: Land management agencies and industrial and non-industrial forestland owners. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Not relevant to this project.
Impacts Both prescribed fire and its mechanical surrogates are generally successful in meeting short-term fuel-reduction objectives such that treated stands are more resilient to high-intensity wildfire. Most available evidence suggests that these objectives are typically accomplished with few unintended consequences, since most ecosystem components (vegetation, soils, wildlife, bark beetles, carbon sequestration) exhibit very subtle effects or no measurable effects at all. Although mechanical treatments do not serve as complete surrogates for fire, their application can help mitigate costs and liability in some areas. This research covered forests across the entire US that once burned frequently with low-moderate intensity. These forests types are the ones given highest priority for fire hazard reduction and restoration by federal, state, and private managers. This research should allow forest managers to plan and install fuel treatments without worrying about harming the ecosystems that they are trying to conserve. It should facilitate an increased rate and scale of fire hazard reduction treatments across the US. This work should also reduce the legal challenges received during project review and installation by those who argue that these treatments are causing ecological harm. It therefore should have a high impact to forest managers across the US. Examination of successful fire management programs at several California parks demonstrated the importance of organized and sustanined educational outreach programs and community collaborations with diverse clientele groups to fostering public support for activities such as prescribed burning to achieve both ecological and risk-management objectives, and provided several models for park managers to emulate. We found that a gap-based approach coupled with small-scale fuel treatments is a promising means to regenerating shade-intolerant species while also reducing fire hazard. For example, gap treatments increased the abundance of "high-light" habitats suitable for pine. At the same time, fuel treatments were successful in reducing hazardous fire behavior. The creation of small gaps followed by burning to reduce fuels effectively addressed two of the major concerns of multi-aged stands in western North American forests- surface fuel loading and regeneration of shade intolerant pine species. While this type of micro-management of small regeneration areas nested within multi-aged stands may seem counter to the concept of these systems being less intensive or "more natural," they nonetheless are treatment alternatives for achieving what would otherwise be unachievable objectives using more traditional approaches. In some respects, the fire after gap approach be viewed as an additional step toward the emulation of a natural disturbance regime -- another means to retain the resiliency of ecosystems.
Publications
- Gilless, J.K. and R.C. Smith. 2012. Management Response To Eroding Wildland Buffers Between Developed And Protected Areas Through Education And Collaborative Planning Efforts. George Wright Forum 29(2): 236-245.
- Stephens, S.L., J.D. McIver, R.E.J. Boerner, C.J. Fettig, J.B. Fontaine, B.R. Hartsough, P. Kennedy, and D.W. Schwilk. 2012. Effects of forest fuel reduction treatments in the United States. BioScience 62:549-560.
- York, R.A., J.J. Battles, R.C. Wenk, and D.S. Saah. 2012. A gap-based approach for regenerating pine species and reducing surface fuels in multiaged mixed conifer stands in the Sierra Nevada, California. Forestry 85:203-213.
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Progress 01/01/11 to 12/31/11
Outputs OUTPUTS: Collaborating with colleagues in So. Sierra Nevada ecoregion, we developed an index for quantifying forest health based on an evaluation of ecological integrity. The index assesses key aspects of forest health: landscape structure (capture of patch size and continuity of the intact forest), forest structure, composition, and ecosystem function. Our assessment emphasized forest structure, especially the density of big trees, and the relative density of snags (i.e., standing dead trees). We assessed two key aspects of forest function: ecosystem productivity and vegetation stability. Live tree biomass has proven to be a robust index of forest function. For a particular forest type, the stand with more aboveground live tree biomass is considered to be more productive and/or least disturbed. The consistent form of the diameter distributions for the conifer forests in this region suggests that deviations away from a negative exponential form could be used as an indicator of change. To detect changes in the diameter distribution, we used the departure index that has the advantage that it distinguishes both the magnitude and direction of change from a defined reference condition. In this case, the reference condition was the negative exponential size distribution. To assess the increased susceptibility of forests to damaging wildfire and the homogenization of many forested landscapes across the western United States resulting from fire exclusion policies, we evaluated a major landscape fuel treatment project (called the Last Chance project) designed by local US Forest Service managers on the Tahoe National Forest, CA. We evaluated the effectiveness of this fuel treatment project at reducing landscape-level fire behavior. To gain insight into the duration of fuel treatment effectiveness, we evaluated the project for 30 years into the future to provide managers with estimates of landscape-scale fuel treatment longevity, i.e., how often they can expect to either maintain treated areas or establish new fuel treatments. We additionally simulated the Last Chance project treatments by varying the upper tree diameter limit for cutting within the proposed thinning treatments. Three scenarios were explored to reflect the diameter limits imposed in the different Sierra Nevada-wide Forest Service planning documents produced in 2001 and 2004. To evaluate the efficacy of index of ecological integrity to measure forest health, we used our approach to measure the condition of the intact forest in Sequoia Kings Canyon National Parks (SEKI). Our assessment of the intact forest was integrated to the watershed level. To better understand the present state of the efforts to engage with communities to collaboratively reduce the risk of infrastructure to fire losses, we undertook a statewide census of all of the California's pre-fire engineers with the development of mandated wildfire protection plans for CAL FIRE's 27 units and contract counties, as well as all identifiable named stakeholders in these plans. The results from this survey were presented to the leadership of CAL FIRE and the State Board of Forestry. PARTICIPANTS: Co-Principal Investigators: J.J. Battles, S.L. Stephens, and J.K. Gilless Graduate Students: R.C. Smith and M. Eitzel Staff: G.B. Roller and B.M. Collins Collaborators: U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, CAL FIRE. TARGET AUDIENCES: Agencies: U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, CAL FIRE. Organizations: Fire Safe Councils, California State Board of Forestry, Local and Volunteer Fire Departments. Individuals: Rural residents. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts Using our approach to measure the condition of the intact forest in Sequoia Kings Canyon National Parks (SEKI), we calculated the area-weighted contribution of each forest type to overall watershed average. For each aspect of the metric, we developed a rating - good, caution, concern. Our criteria for ecological integrity were based on three separate sources - all supported by either peer-reviewed results or direct comparison with the baseline (region-averaged) conditions. Our preliminary results, submitted to the NPS for their review, found forest health to be good though out SEKI. It is clear from our examination of the Last Chance project on the Tahoe National, that although it was not based on a theoretical, dispersed, regular arrangement of treatments or a more intensive modeling effort to spatially locate treatments, it still demonstrated effective reduction in modeled fire behavior and burn probabilities. Because our analysis incorporates variable wind directions and speeds, one of the dominant drivers of fire spread, we believe these results reflect a realistic assessment of treatment effectiveness and not simply results driven by a few key modeling assumptions. The winds used in our modeling represent actual conditions that are associated with large fire potential within the Last Chance study area. Furthermore, because we used detailed and extensive forest stand structure data as inputs for our fire and forest dynamics modeling. These factors, along with the modeling adaptations we incorporated (modified fuel model selection and stochastic regeneration) contribute to a robust analysis. Results from this research are currently informing the management goals of millions of acres of mixed conifer forests in the Sierra Nevada and in other forest regions in California and the western US. With the use of landscape-scale fuel treatments being planned over millions of acres of western US forests research such as this is critical to inform managers and planners on the characteristics of effective treatments. Examination of California's community wildfire protection plans clearly showed than many suffered from a lack of currency and erosion of stakeholder Involvement over the ten year period in which they have been developed, and most revised. Identified Challenges to resolving these problems include conflicts between state policymakers and local leaders, the lack of performance-based rewards or penalties and a clear framework for local implementation. The decentralized organizational structure of CAL FIRE means that consistent policy implementation requires clear standards as well as performance-based management incentives. The 2010 Strategic Fire Plan as well as the new Pre-Fire plan template with its evaluation criteria may well presage a shift in this direction, resulting in consistent, impactful plans.
Publications
- Gilless, J.K., Smith, R.C., and D.Davis. 2011. Long-term Interagency Fire Safe Council Commitment to Fire-adapted Communities: Lessons From The Bull Fire. Fire Management Today 71(4):34-37.
- Smith, R.C. and J.K. Gilless. 2011. Institutional Obstacles to Success in Implementing a Statewide Community-Based Fire Planning Mandate. California Journal of Politics and Policy 3(1): Article 12.
- Collins, B.M., S.L. Stephens, G.B. Roller, and J.J. Battles. 2011. Simulating fire and forest dynamics for a landscape fuel treatment project in the Sierra Nevada. Forest Science 57:77-88.
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Progress 01/01/10 to 12/31/10
Outputs OUTPUTS: We have completed the analysis of more than 1,500 tree core pairs (dead, alive) needed to develop a forest health index based on tree survival probability. We have developed master chronologies for the major conifer species in our forest health study. We have robust chronologies that measure annual variation in growth due to climatic effects for: white fir, sugar pine, ponderosa pine, Douglas-fir (northern California site), red fir, and incense cedar. We are dating 150 fire scar samples from mixed conifer forests in the northern and southern Sierra Nevada to determine how fire once burned in these areas from 1600-2010. This work is being done at large spatial scales whish will inform management plans to improve forest health. We have presented our preliminary results on regarding measures of forest health at two public meetings in California. We have provided the content and participated in the production of an educational video describing our approach to measuring forest health. PARTICIPANTS: We worked with the US Forest Service Region 5, the US Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station, USGS Western Center of Ecological Research, and Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park. Professional development occurred with annual meetings and field visits for the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project. TARGET AUDIENCES: Researchers in forest ecology, fire science, and climate science. Federal and private forest land managers in the western US including the US Forest Service, National Park Service, and private forest land owners. Our research publications and presentations reach a large number of people. Meetings alone are attended by hundreds of people interested in Sierra Nevada forest management and our publications are available to all. PROJECT MODIFICATIONS: Nothing significant to report during this reporting period.
Impacts Our results regarding the delayed mortality of trees following prescribed fire has instigated a review of policies and procedures of the fire management program at Sequoia Kings Canyon National Park. Results from our second prescribed fire have been used by the US Forest Service in the northern Sierra Nevada to inform management plans to reduce fire hazards. Based on exit surveys, the majority of participants in the public meetings that included a discussion of forest health stated that they learned something new or gained a new understanding of the issue.
Publications
- van Mantgem, P.J., N.L. Stephenson, J.J. Battles, and J. E. Keeley. 2011. Long-term effects of prescribed fire on mixed conifer forest structure in the Sierra Nevada, California. Forest Ecology and Management. doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2010.12.013
- Collins, B.M., S.L. Stephens, J.M. Moghaddas, and J. Battles. 2010. Challenges and approaches in planning fuel treatments across fire-excluded forested landscapes. Journal of Forestry 108: 24-31.
- Moghaddas, J.J., B.M. Collins, K. Menning, E.E.Y. Moghaddas, and S.L. Stephens. 2010. Fuel treatment effects on modeled landscape-level fire behavior in the northern Sierra Nevada. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 40:1751-1765.
- Stephens. S.L., C.I. Millar, and B.M. Collins. 2010. Operational approaches to managing forests of the future in Mediterranean regions within a context of changing climates. Environmental Research Letters 5: 024003.
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