Test Blog Grid

Quantifying Pinyon-Juniper Reduction within North America’s Sagebrush Ecosystem

Documents patterns of conifer reduction across sage-grouse range over the past several years overlapping with concerted sage-grouse habitat restoration. They find total the area supporting tree cover decreased by 1.6%, with 2/3 attributable to active management and 1/3 due to wildfire. The study shows spatial targeting of conifer reductions has been successful: over half (53%)…
read more
Monitoring pinyon-juniper cover and aboveground biomass across the Great Basin

Even after 150 years of prior expansion, pinyon-juniper continue to replace shrublands and grasslands across the Great Basin. From 2000-2016, the amount of new pinyon-juniper ‘forest’ (>10% tree cover) increased >1.1 million acres at rate of 0.46% per year. Eighty percent of the increase in tree biomass documented was due to infill, supporting predictions of…
read more
FREE Lesson Plans about Climate Change in Colorado

The Mountain Studies Institute of the San Juan Mountains has free curriculum to teach kids and teenagers about climate change in their region. Lesson plans include a Power Point with short videos, worksheets, homework & educational games! Visit their website to access for free.
read more
Educational Resources for Children – Waterways of Southwest Colorado

The Mountain Studies Institute in the San Juan mountains has some excellent resources for teaching children about their waterways: A Chemistry Lab about Acid Mine Drainage Water Quality Field Trip Wonderful, Wacky, Water Critters: A Guide to Benthic Macro-Invertebrates
read more
Comparing Hot and Cold Loading in an Integrated Biomass Recovery Operation

An observational study was performed to understand the operational characteristics of the loader in a hot operation (handling both sawlog and biomass components concurrently) and cold operation (handling biomass and sawlogs separately) for harvesting sawlogs and biomass. Read the publication. Citation: Kizha, A., H.-S. Han, N. Anderson, A. Koirala, and L. Louis. 2020. Comparing hot…
read more
Adaptive Goverance and the Administrative State: knowledge management for forest planning in the western US.

Researchers interviewed US Forest Service staff and external partners to investigate challenges and opportunities for improved knowledge management in the context of ecological monitoring for federal forest planning in the West. Read the article. Citation: Wurtzebach, Z., C. Schultz, A.E.M. Waltz, B.E. Esch, T.N. Wasserman. 2019. Adaptive governance and the administrative state: knowledge management for…
read more
COVID-19 Resources

Updated COVID-19 resources can be found on a dedicated page of our website.
read more
Conversations about Conversions: Perspectives of Disturbance-Driven Change

From authors Jill M. Young and Jonathan D. Coop – School of Environment & Sustainability, Western Colorado University: Changing disturbance regimes and climate across western North America are increasingly recognized to have the potential to drive major and lasting shifts in vegetation. Such changes can be referred to “type conversion”, yet lacking a formal definition,…
read more
Community Adaptation, Landscape Resilience and Safe Responses for COVID-19

Click here to read the article from Fire Adapted Colorado.
read more
Fires & Soils in Frequent-Fire Landscapes of the Southwest

This working paper provides a summary of the current literature on the interaction of forest soils and fire in the southwestern frequent-fire forests. Read the full paper from the Ecological Restoration Institute here.
read more