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Big Trees, Bark Beetles, Goshawks & Timber

From the Rocky Mountain Research Station: Throughout the Rocky Mountains over the last century, large ponderosa pine trees provided lumber for growing cities and towns, along with fuel and timber for the mining and railroad industries. Most of these forests are now occupied by dense young and mid-aged forests highly susceptible to being killed by…
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Using “Good” Fires to Reduce “Bad” Fire Effects & Smoke Impacts

From the Rocky Mountain Research Station: Prescribed fires produce smoke that adversely impacts public health, although not to the same degree as wildfires. The public needs to understand these trade-offs, but scientists can also assist by improving the fire and smoke models used to forecast smoke impacts on downwind communities.
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Using FIA Data to Predict Forest Understory Vegetation Structure

From the Rocky Mountain Research Station: Understory vegetation is a significant component of terrestrial carbon stocks and play an important role in determining fuel loading and wildlife habitat. Given the paucity of regional to national-scale studies aimed at describing relationships between overstory and understory vegetation attributes and an increasing need to understand ecosystems, it is…
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Snag Hazards to Firefighters

From the Rocky Mountain Research Station: Snags continue to pose an ever-present hazard to responders, and recent increases in fire activity have resulted in an accumulation of these hazards across forested landscapes of the American West. Developing tools to spatially quantify this hazard can help protect the fire management service as it strives to meet…
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Management of High-Elevation Five Needle White Pines

From the Rocky Mountain Research Station: The regeneration for resilience framework helps prioritize limited management resources for the greatest benefit to five-needle pines.
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How Does Fire Kill Trees?

From the Rocky Mountain Research Station: Fires burn millions of acres annually and being able to predict what trees will die after fire is important for forest management.
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Science-Based Assessments of Riparian Ecosystems

From the Rocky Mountain Research Station: For a land type that covers relatively little area, riparian areas and groundwater-dependent ecosystems are an extremely important component of healthy watersheds and ecological function. Yet over the past few centuries, many of these areas have been stressed by a wide range of land uses. Restoring them can be…
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Morphology Is Better Than Size for Revealing a Tree’s Age

From the Rocky Mountain Research Station: In Colorado’s Front Range, restoring fire-dependent ponderosa forests is a management priority often informed by understanding the historical structure and ecological function of these forests. Retention of old ponderosa pine trees within restored stands provides forests with a diversity of age structure, genetics, and resilience to low to moderate…
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Fire Regimes and Structural Changes in Pine Forests of the Mogollon Highlands Ecoregion: Implications for Ecological Restoration

David W.Huffman, M. Lisa Floyd, Dustin P. Hanna, Joseph E. Crouse, Peter Z. Fulé, Andrew J. Sánchez Meador, Judith D. Springer. Forest Ecology and Management 465 (2020) 118087 Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests occur at their warmer, drier environmental limits in the Mogollon Highlands ecoregion (MHE) of the Southwestern United States, and are commonly found…
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Of Woodpeckers and Harvests: Finding Compatibility Between Habitat and Salvage Logging

From the Rocky Mountain Research Station’s “Science You Can Use Bulletin” Issue 38. The western United States is home to many woodpecker species that are strongly associated with recently disturbed forests, including post wildfire and post-beetle outbreaks. These types of landscapes are favored habitat because the dead and dying trees provide nesting and foraging substrates.…
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