Science You Can Use

In early 2024, Michael Caggiano, a wildland firefighter and regional fire analyst with the Forest Service, approached David Flores, a research social scientist with the Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Research Station, with a proposal: what about conducting a research study on the perspectives of wildland firefighters around food catering? Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access the related content on Treesearch.

Hidden like fish eggs in the streambed, the answer was buried in the mathematical models of Morgan Spark's graduate work. Biologists and land managers know early fish life is sensitive, and nature is difficult to predict. In the streambed, eggs and young fish can be at risk from unintentional habitat disruptions from activities such as grazing, prescribed fire, and road work. The question was how to know when wild fish are hatching and emerging to avoid those sensitive windows. A new tool, hatchR, is here to lend biologists a helping hand - or fin. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access the related content on Treesearch

Hostile winds yanked at the yellow transect tapes. Stephanie Yelenik and fellow researchers plodded on, endeavoring to place tapes in an organized grid. Their field site stretched across the fire-scorched sagebrush steppe of Peavine Mountain in the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest near Reno, Nevada. The team of Forest Service and University of Nevada scientists were setting up experimental plots to test native seeding strategies. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access the related content on Treesearch

Did you know your cellphone's GPS locations can help us decipher how recreationists and wildlife overlap in time and space? Mark Ditmer, a research ecologist at the Rocky Mountain Research Station, and colleagues harnessed this cellphone-derived human mobility data to explore how managers can enhance recreation and protect wildlife in sensitive habitats. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access the related content on Treesearch.

For nearly 100 years, the Forest Service has inventoried America's forest resources to provide a scorecard of forest health, vitality, and sustainability. Born out of the McSweeney-McNary Forest Research Act of 1928, the Forest Inventory and Analysis Program is nationally coordinated by regional experts and now consists of more than 355,000 survey plots across public and private land. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread

For homeowners living in the wildland-urban interface, wildfire outreach programs encourage wildfire risk mitigation and evacuation preparedness as steps to protect homes and lives in the event of a wildfire. Wildfire risk mitigation may include activities such as removing vegetation from around structures and storing combustible materials (e.g. firewood or propane tanks) away from homes. Signing up to receive evacuation notifications, packing a to-go bag, or identifying evacuation routes are examples of evacuation preparedness. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access the related content on Treesearch.

Land managers rely on best available information and relevant research for decision making, but matching the right information to the right questions can sometimes be challenging. To close this gap, when researchers and managers co-produce research from the beginning it is more likely research findings will have practical applications. Recently published work by USDA Forest Service researchers Chris Armatas, Teresa Hollingsworth, and colleagues working at the Aldo Leopold Wilderness Research Institute (ALWRI) in Missoula, Montana, reflects on both the benefits and tradeoffs of using a co-production approach for developing the ALWRI 10-year science agenda intended to help inform management of wilderness areas. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread Read the Science You Can Use and access the related content on Treesearch

Public lands provide extensive recreation opportunities for activities including camping and cabins, biking, horseback riding, hiking, and fishing. Due to increasing visitation and the associated impacts to natural resources and the visitor experience, recreation managers may decide to adopt a recreation allocation strategy to limit the number of visitors at a given time. Allocation includes allotment (splitting between groups such as commercial use and private use) and rationing (a mechanism for allocating within groups). The main strategies used for rationing include first come, first served, pricing, reservations, lotteries, and merit.  Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread Read the Science You Can Use and access the related content on Treesearch.  

When the Black Fire ignited in southwestern New Mexico in 2022, it had all the ingredients for disaster: record-high winds, extremely low humidity, and over 131,000 hectares (323,708 acres) of forest fuels to feed on. But something unexpected happened. Instead of becoming another catastrophic megafire, it burned mostly at low to moderate severity. The secret? The landscape had already experienced dozens of previous fires, both planned and natural, that helped tame the beast.   Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread.   Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

To effectively manage fire, land and fire managers need detailed, current local information - for example, the amount of burnable material present, fuel moisture levels, winds, temperatures, and terrain changes across time and space. Managers also need these data to decide where, when, and how to treat a landscape while balancing costs and benefits, projected wildfire risk, and potential impacts. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

The USDA Forest Service is required to develop "land management plans," which serve as roadmaps for maintaining the health and productivity of national forests and grasslands. These plans are designed to support ecological integrity, or an ecosystem's ability to withstand environmental disturbance. One way that national forests and grasslands, or "planning units", measure ecological integrity is by looking at the way that focal species respond to the effects of management activities and environmental changes. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Until recently, wildlife habitat maps were static documents that can quickly become outdated anytime landscape conditions changed due to disturbances like wildfire, drought, and timber harvest. But now, researchers at the Rocky Mountain Research Station and their collaborators have developed an approach for producing near-real-time wildlife habitat maps using Google Earth Engine. These products are called Living Maps because of their ability to stay up to date - incorporating new input data and remaining accurate over time - thus functioning like an automated wildlife habitat monitoring system. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

When wildland firefighters head into the field, they know the work is dangerous; but until now, agencies lacked detailed data on exactly which activities and hazards posed the greatest threats. A recent analysis of five years of serious firefighter injuries offers new insights. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

It's no secret that wildland fires kill trees, but are more trees killed by fire when they are already stressed from drought? New research from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service indicates that prefire drought can increase tree mortality after fire, even with the same level of tree damage. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Like Goldilocks, ground-nesting birds in the southeastern U.S. need habitat conditions that are "just right." They need just the right food and just enough protective cover, all in close proximity - talk about high maintenance! Recently published research syntheses in the Fire Effects Information System (FEIS) about ground-nesting bird species of management concern describe how prescribed fire can help meet these needs for chuck-will's-widows, eastern whip-poor-wills, and northern bobwhites. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

When smoke from a prescribed fire pops up on an otherwise clear day, people may question the rationale behind the haze. After all, smoke from wildland fires can be a major health hazard due to fine particulates (PM2.5) and gaseous pollutants. At the same time, prescribed fires are one of our best tools to reduce hazardous fuels and restore fire-prone forests and grasslands. In recent years, land managers have been asked to expand the use of prescribed fire, but smoke is consistently cited as a barrier. New research by USDA Forest Service scientists sheds light on one key smoke challenge - long-term smoldering of decomposed organic matter, also known as duff. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Healthy streams play a critical role in supporting plant, fish, and animal communities. However, stream degradation is a global problem that threatens the condition of these important ecosystems. Channel incision is one way that streams can change in response to natural or human processes. This process of degradation leads to lower water tables and a lost connection to the floodplain. As a result, water availability changes for the riparian plant communities, resulting in further degradation. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

The desert is hot, dry, and prickly … the perfect combination for wildfires. So, shouldn't desert plants be used to fire? It turns out that Sonoran desert scrub communities, home to the iconic saguaro cactus, are vulnerable to frequent large or severe wildfires and may not recover for centuries, if at all. Recent publications by Rocky Mountain Research Station ecologists discuss how desert plants respond to fires, and how big, how often, and how hot fires burn in this ecosystem. The Fire Regime Synthesis about Sonoran desert scrub communities and associated Species Reviews are published in the Fire Effects Information System (FEIS) - an online searchable database of research syntheses about how fire affects ecosystems and individual species. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Individual fire history studies paint a picture of how often and how severely fires burned on specific landscapes, providing valuable points of evidence for land management decisions. Syntheses of multiple fire history studies weave these individual pictures into a panoramic tapestry, providing a more complete understanding of historical fire regimes. For example, syntheses of fire history studies in ponderosa pine communities tell stories about precolonial historical fires frequently burning small areas and occasionally burning large areas, followed by a century with very few fires due to fire exclusion. Fire exclusion began with European settlement, first by reducing ignitions by American Indians, then by reducing fine-fuel biomass and connectivity with livestock grazing and eventually, through active fire suppression. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

In a field that is hyper-focused on efficiency and cost savings, environmental DNA (eDNA) sampling - or detecting fish and wildlife from traces of genetic material in the environment - has become the gold standard. Over the last decade, eDNA sampling has emerged as a powerful and cost-effective tool for national forests to obtain the data they need to make management decisions. Now, Forest Service scientists have created "biochips" that generate these high-value data even more efficiently, buoying the value of eDNA monitoring capacity far into the future. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

The Wildfire Research (WiRē) team, supported by USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, is no stranger to engaging with residents and communities in fire-prone areas. They've been at it for over a decade - regularly refining their approach to reach the most people. Still, midway through a project in Lake County, Colorado, the WiRē team received almost no survey responses from households in three mobile home communities. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

In forests across the western United States, large, severe wildfires are creating treeless patches that are unlikely to reforest naturally due to a lack of seed sources and a warming climate. Active reforestation through tree planting has the potential to help forest ecosystems recover after wildfire. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Mature forest cover for nesting and roosting currently plays a starring role in California spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis) habitat management, but spotted owls also depend on access to nearby mixed-age forest stands that support one of their main food sources, the dusky-footed woodrat (Neotoma fuscipes). Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Historical and contemporary policies and practices, including the suppression of lightning-ignited fires and the removal of intentional fires ignited by Indigenous peoples, have resulted in over a century of fire exclusion across many of the USA's landscapes. Within many designated wilderness areas, this intentional exclusion of fire has clearly altered ecological processes and thus constitutes a fundamental and ubiquitous act of trammeling. Through a framework that recognizes four orders of trammeling, we demonstrate the substantial, long-term, and negative effects of fire exclusion on the natural conditions of fire-adapted wilderness ecosystems. In order to untrammel more than a century of fire exclusion, the implementation of active programs of intentional burning may be necessary across some wilderness landscapes. We also suggest greater recognition and accommodation of Indigenous cultural burning, a practice which Tribes used to shape and maintain many fire-adapted landscapes for thousands of years before Euro-American colonization, including landscapes today designated as wilderness. Human-ignited fire may be critical to restoring the natural character of fire-adapted wilderness landscapes and can also support ecocultural restoration efforts sought by Indigenous peoples. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Evolutionary niches are great for species survival, but when humans get stuck arguing from viewpoint niches, it can mean bad news for ecosystem resilience. The Utah Forest Restoration Working Group, a collaborative partnership of agencies and stakeholders, operates beyond niches and uses group consensus. Their approach has resulted in a big first: agreement among divergent stakeholders on a step-by-step protocol for deciding how to restore and protect riparian forests in Utah. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

What plants can survive fire, can displace native plants, and are difficult to manage? Among others are these eight nonnative species in the western United States: buffelgrass, cutleaf blackberry, diffuse knapweed, Himalayan blackberry, Sahara mustard, spotted knapweed, ventenata, and yellow starthistle. Unfortunately, one of the reasons that invasive plants are so hard to manage is because there is no one-size-fits-all approach—each species has its own tricks enabling it to thrive and wreak havoc. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

The Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools program (LANDFIRE) is a multi-agency (U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and U.S. Department of the Interior) national geospatial suite of datasets. Born from the Congressional National Fire Plan in support of the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, LANDFIRE's prototype was launched in 2002. Chartered by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council in 2004, this year the program celebrates 20 years of applied science. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

An extreme multi-year drought with extensive bark beetle outbreaks in California from 2012 to 2016 killed an estimated 147 million trees. This included ponderosa pine, incense cedar, white fir, and pinyon pine, rapidly changing forests over vast areas. Recently published work by Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) researchers Sharon Hood and Charlotte Reed found that major tree mortality events like these increase surface and canopy fuels - dead needles, branches, and logs - which may result in more extreme forest fires and increased emissions when these areas burn. Drought often triggers bark beetle outbreaks in forests, where low moisture can stress trees and make it easier for beetles to kill them. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Rangelands worldwide are essential for carbon sequestration, water retention, and habitat to name a few critical benefits. Prescribed fire is used to benefit vegetation and soil and reduce fuels on rangeland sites. What hasn't been clear is how burning on rangelands may affect microbes in the soil, which are responsible for breaking down woody material. Also missing was an understanding of how the insects that typically call rangelands home respond to these burns. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Livestock grazing is a common use of rangelands that can be managed to support rangeland health, including the wide array of ecosystem services that benefit society from public lands and private lands. This requires careful allocation of naturally occurring forage on large landscapes for both domestic and wild herbivores. Managers know grazing can sustain rangeland health as long as they time it right and balance the duration, frequency, and intensity of the grazing. However, forage production on a single area or landscape varies significantly from year to year, which, until recently, has limited the accuracy of data available to managers when they make decisions about grazing. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

More than 100 years of fire exclusion, logging, grazing, and other human activities have contributed to uncharacteristically high tree densities in the dry conifer forests of the western United States. Mechanical forest treatments using heavy machinery or chainsaws to remove trees are being used widely to create a more open and diverse overstory, especially in situations where prescribed fire is not feasible. It has not been clear how these treatments affect the understory, particularly over longer time frames. To help managers better assess what is happening in the understory, Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) researchers Arièl Demarest and Paula Fornwalt recently published a study that looked at responses shortly after mechanical treatment (1-2 years) and over a longer time frame (4-6 years), across a wide environmental gradient in dry conifer forests of the Colorado Front Range. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

The REPLANT Act, part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, directs the Forest Service to plant more than a billion trees on 4 million acres of deforested national forest lands over the next decade. Most of these lands were burned by severe wildfire, and are not reforesting naturally due to a lack of seed sources and unfavorable climatic conditions. Currently, there are several bottlenecks in the planting pipeline, so maximizing the survival and growth of seedlings is critical. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

In the western United States, wildfire activity has increased the exposure of communities to fires that can devastate lives and destroy homes and businesses. As fires encroach on urban areas, protecting communities from wildfire impacts is a top priority for fire managers. Scientists studying wildland fire in the wildland urban interface (WUI) are particularly interested in using historical data and analytic models to understand how to reduce risks to the WUI. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Limber pine is an ecologically vital species that provides food for wildlife, facilitates the establishment of other tree species, and grows where other species struggle. A nonnative disease, white pine blister rust (WPBR), and native bark beetles are killing limber pines faster than they can grow back. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

In the United States, more than 1,400 native plant nurseries produce more than a billion seedlings for reforestation and restoration projects every year. Many years of monitoring and research have shown that seedling survival of native plants can be greater when the plants are grown in nurseries and outplanted compared to direct seeding or natural regeneration. Production of high-quality seedlings reduces costs and improves seedling survival and growth after outplanting. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Scientists have spent decades trying to understand how to best promote resilient forests and reduce fuels. A golden endeavor certainly. Is the best approach using a series of prescribed burns? Or is it mechanically cutting trees? Or does the additive effect of both cutting and burning provide the best alchemy? Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

More high-severity wildfire is occurring in the U.S. West and affecting people and forests in challenging ways. In places where mitigating high-severity wildfire is desirable, returning low-severity fire through fuel treatments is common practice. The last quantitative review of fuel treatment research happened 10 years ago. Much has been learned since then. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Satellite, radar, and strategically placed Remote Automated Weather Stations (RAWS) are a few of the many technologies used to gather data and predict weather. Yet, some weather events are still unpredictable. A morning forecast for a chance of storms in the afternoon can transform into a major thunderstorm in the middle of an alpine hike. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Archaea, bacteria, fungi, and viruses are organisms that comprise the soil microbiome and play a crucial role in the health of the world's forests. The soil microbiome is vital in cycling important nutrients needed by vegetation (e.g., nitrogen), stabilizing soil organic matter, and forming essential symbioses with plants, such as the ectomycorrhizal fungi (EMF) that are obligate symbiotic partners of the conifer tree species that dominate forests of western North America. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

Public support is crucial for successful fuels management, but vocal opposition can mask broader yet quieter community acceptance. It is helpful for land managers to have a picture of all perspectives, not just the most vocal ones. And what do communities think about fuels treatments? Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

When land managers or planners need to understand how a segment of a forest road is impacting water quality, the Geomorphic Road Analysis and Inventory Package (GRAIP) is the go-to resource, with in-depth tools for intensive analysis. However, GRAIP's use is limited to road segments where detailed field data are available or when analyzing high-risk roads within priority watersheds. With the National Forest System having over 380,000 miles of roads, that's a lot of mileage that can't be easily analyzed with GRAIP. For situations where field data are unavailable or entire watersheds need analysis, GRAIP_Lite is a new go-to resource. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use on Treesearch and access related content on Treesearch. 

The 2021 Tamarack Fire in California, started by lightning in a national forest wilderness area, burned nearly 70,000 acres and eventually destroyed 24 structures. Because properties were damaged, the public and media scrutinized the fire management response. This fire exemplifies not only the challenges of fire management in land and resource management, but also how shortcomings in the fire response reporting system can make way for misperceptions to dominate the public narrative. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.

The first fire on Earth ignited 420 million years ago. Today, our planet remains the only one that we know of where oxygen, fuels, and ignition sources - including humans - come together to spark flames. As fire historian Stephen Pyne writes, "We are uniquely fire creatures on a unique fire planet." Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch. 

Lamprey are a lineage of boneless fish that is older than trees. Traditionally, lamprey species have been identified by morphology - that is, their visible features, such as teeth. However, this method can be unreliable because without bones, lampreys don't have many distinguishing features, and most of these don't develop until adulthood. Thus, significant conservation actions may be taken, or not taken, based on species designations that are … slippery. Music courtesy of Souvenir Thread. Read the Science You Can Use and access related content on Treesearch.