Woodland

Pinyon and juniper slowly invade sagebrush steppe

View article. Areas that were once scrubbed of their scattered wood by periodic low-intensity fires now burn with blistering wildfires that sterilize the soil and wipe out surviving perennial grasses. These changes have reduced forage, diverted soil water, promoted soil loss, and changed wildlife habitat. There are a lot of unknown factors about how to…

An introduction to the Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project (SageSTEP): Fire science research to inform land management decision

View factsheet. Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project, known as SageSTEP, is an interdisciplinary, five-year research program that is exploring ways to improve the health of sagebrush rangelands across the Great Basin. The project is funded by the federal government’s Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) and is a collaborative effort among five universities, six federal agencies,…

SageSTEP: A model collaboration for land managers

View factsheet. Public land managers in the Great Basin aim to maintain and restore healthy ecosystems. Climate change, private development pressures, and invasive plants are just a few of the challenges they face. Without regional collaboration, stewardship of public lands can be expensive and ineffective. SageSTEP (Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project) is a model collaborative…

Long-term effects of tree expansion and reduction on soil climate in a semiarid ecosystem

View article. We sought to determine the effects of tree expansion, tree reduction treatments, and expansion phase at time of treatment over 12–13 yr post-treatment. Because the effects of tree reduction on vegetation can vary with the soil temperature/moisture regime, we also analyzed differences in soil climate variables between the mesic/aridic-xeric and frigid/xeric regime classifications…

Long-term evidence for fire as an ecohydrologic threshold-reversal mechanism on woodland-encroached sagebrush shrublands

View article. We evaluated whether tree removal by burning can decrease late-succession woodland ecohydrologic resilience by increasing vegetation and ground cover over a 9-year period after fire and whether the soil erosion feedback on late-succession woodlands is reversible by burning. To address these questions, we employed a suite of vegetation and soil measurements and rainfall…

Soils mediate the impact of fine woody debris on invasive and native grasses as whole trees are mechanically shredded into firebreaks in pinon-juniper woodlands

View article. To stem wildfires, trees are being mechanically shredded into firebreaks with the resulting fine woody debris (FWD) potentially exerting immense control over soil and plants. We linked FWD-induced changes in microbial activity and nutrient availability to the frequency of Bromus tectorum and three native, perennial grasses across 31 piñon-juniper woodlands, UT, USA. Using…

Response of bird community structure to habitat management in pinyon-juniper woodland-sagebrush ecotones

View article. We used structural equation modeling to develop and statistically test our conceptual model that the current bird assembly at a site is structured primarily by the previous bird community with additional drivers from current and surrounding habitat conditions as well as external regional bird dynamics. Treatment reduced woodland cover by >5% at 80…

Pretreatment tree dominance and conifer removal treatments affect plant succession in sagebrush communities

View article. We prescribed burned or cut juniper (Juniperus spp. L.) and pinyon (Pinus spp. L.) trees at 10 sites across the western United States. We measured vegetation cover and density on untreated and treated plots 3 and 6 yr after treatment across a gradient of pretreatment tree dominance as quantified by the tree dominance…

Short-term impacts of tree removal on runoff and erosion from pinyon- and juniper-dominated sagebrush hillslopes

View article. Tree removal is often applied to woodland-encroached rangelands to restore vegetation and improve hydrologic function, but knowledge is limited regarding effects of tree removal on hydrologic response. This study used artificial rainfall and overland flow experiments (9-13 m2) and measures of vegetation and ground cover to investigate short-term (1-2 yr) responses to tree…

Cover estimations using object-based image analysis rule sets developed across multiple scales in pinyon-juniper woodlands

View article. Numerous studies have been conducted that evaluate the utility of remote sensing for monitoring and assessing vegetation and ground cover to support land management decisions and complement ground measurements. However, few comparisons have been made that evaluate the utility of object-based image analysis (OBIA) to accurately classify a landscape where rule sets (models)…

Posts Tagged ‘Woodland’