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December National Research Digest
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Hello Forest Service research fan,
In this month's newsletter, rise from the ashes with California's Sierra Nevada conifer forests, read how forest health treatments support productive forests, and celebrate the holiday season with the Capitol Christmas Tree. |
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| Members of a fire crew removing fuels as part of fire operations in the Stanislaus National Forest in California.
USDA Forest Service/Cecilio Ricardo |
Stabilizing California Forests with Fuels Treatments
Rising from the ashes: fuels treatments across California’s Sierra Nevada conifer forests can
reduce the prevalence of high-severity fire by almost 90 percent, say agency researchers studying a decade of data. When fuels treatments stabilize these productive forests, they can sustain benefits like timber, clean water, and carbon storage. Study authors
found that treated areas, especially large ones, acted as fuels breaks along fire perimeters. Treated areas also better retained their benefits during droughts compared to untreated areas. This work shows how active management can help fire-adapted forests
persist in warmer and drier conditions.
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Western Wildfires Grow More Severe; Active Management May Help
Western wildfires burn ten times more area—and severely burn 15 times more area—than
they did in 1985, found agency researchers
analyzing four decades of data . Study authors attribute these trends to warmer and drier conditions. If warming and drying trends persist through mid-century, area burned will likely increase threefold; area burned severely, fourfold. Authors note that
fire severity impacts forests and their benefits more acutely than fire size. Active management like mechanical thinning and prescribed burning may temper future fire intensity, add the authors, and move landscapes closer to fire-adapted conditions.
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Would You Remove Wood after Pacific Northwest Wildfires?
Removing dead wood from forests post-fire can reduce future fire intensity and boost
timber yields—but that same dead wood also shelters many wildlife species when left where it lies. That’s why agency scientists built a
model of post-fire recovery to help guide wood removals in highly productive Pacific Northwest forests. These landscapes were once considered too wet for destructive fires—an assumption challenged by recent upswings in fire intensity and frequency—and excluded
from past models. Study authors found that the benefits of keeping some dead wood as habitat persist for decades in these forests, while the benefits of removing dead wood to reduce fire hazard expire quickly. Study authors stress that managers must consider
many factors, including weather, changes in live vegetation, and non-fire disturbances, when removing wood.
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Canopy Gaps Support Pollinators, Productive Appalachian Forests
Two for one:
small canopy gaps created to reduce damage caused by a forest pest also support pollinators, show agency researchers studying hemlock forests in Appalachia. These forests provide timber, habitat, and erosion control along riverbanks, while thriving pollinators
increase crop yields. In their study, the researchers found greater abundance and diversity of native bees collected from canopy gap plots compared to samples collected from control plots. Additionally, measures of hemlock health—impacted by the invasive wooly
hemlock adelgid—stayed steady in canopy gap plots and declined in control plots. Study authors suggest future researchers expand on these findings by running longer experiments and testing different sampling methods.
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Research and Development Presents . . .
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“Promoting
Productivity in Eastern Oak Ecosystems ,” a webinar series during which scientists and natural resource professionals will share strategies for sustaining oak forests impacted by fire suppression, land use change, and pests and diseases. Episodes will
air 10:00 to 11:00 AM EST on Tuesdays and Thursdays from Jan. 13 to Jan. 22.
"Productive
Forests and Rangelands," a webinar series covering forest products, post-fire regeneration, forest measurements, pollinators, grazing, and more. Episodes will air 1:00 to 2:00 PM EST on Wednesdays from Jan. 14 to Feb. 4.
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Use
passive acoustic monitoring to detect wildlife with agency-developed guidelines and open-source code, recently tested in the northern Blue Mountains of Oregon and Washington.
Predict
soil temperatures during prescribed burns at depths up to 25 inches with an agency-developed model, which is based on burn data from western conifer stands.
Examine
factors influencing lumber recovery in hardwood mills with an agency-developed tool, which can provide findings for a single log or trends for hundreds of logs of various species, shapes, and qualities.
Evaluate
metrics of ecosystem resilience with an agency-developed index, which aids users who are revegetating landscapes after disturbances.
And finally, celebrate this year’s
Capitol Christmas Tree by learning about productive forests and the benefits they provide us with resources for learners of all ages.
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The Capitol Christmas Tree, annually harvested from a national forest, on the US Capitol lawn in 2017.
USDA Forest Service/David Kosling
Correction: in last week’s productive forests newsletter, we stated that a
study on post-logging soil recovery in the Kootenai National Forest lasted 20 years, and that 85 percent of the research sites mostly recovered within three to five years post-harvest. The study actually lasted 22 years, and 86 percent of the plots showed
some recovery, with the fastest rate of recovery happening in the first three to five years; the sites did not reach almost full recovery in three to five years.
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This email was sent by: USDA Forest Service Research and Development
201 14th St SW Washington, DC, 20227, USA
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