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Science You Can Use is a product of USDA Forest Service Research & Development that summarizes and synthesizes current scientific research. In each episode, we read aloud the latest Science You Can Use publication. Each episode delivers key science findings and management implications to people who make and influence decisions about managing land and natural resources in the Intermountain West and beyond.
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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.
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