In this dissertation, I examine how the spatial configuration of forest ownership influences the risk-mitigating behavior of public and private forestland owners over time. I determine whether or not the predicted equilibrium outcomes are socially optimal and, if not, whether the introduction of regulation, liability, or private insurance would lead...
This dataset consists of vascular plant species cover estimates collected from 12, 1x1-m quadrats, nested within 15x15-m plots that excluded and were open to wild ungulate access. The wild ungulate exclusion experiment was conducted in young forest plantations (<6 years old), each randomly assigned to one of 3 silvicultural herbicide...
The accumulation of fuels in fire prone landscapes, and changing climatic conditions, have resulted in increasingly volatile fire behaviors. As a result, social and operational risk, management expenditures, and budgetary requirements for responsible agencies are increasing. The United States Forest Service (USFS) manages 193 million acres across the United States...
Competition for soil water resources between newly planted Douglas-fir seedlings and aggressive early-seral plants, such as Senecio sylvaticus [L.] (Woodland groundsel, Senecio), can create drought conditions that impact tree seedling physiology, growth and likelihood of mortality. However, the specific impact of Senecio on soil moisture dynamics and inducement of water...
Voluntary environmental programs (VEPs) have been created to encourage companies to engage in behaviors that mitigate environmental impacts (e.g., recycling, emissions reduction). Many ski areas participate in the Sustainable Slopes Program, an initiative that promotes VEPs in the ski area industry. Past research has addressed the performance of VEPs in...
The over-arching theme of this work is that soil data affect the performance and realism of vegetation models with particular focus on their ability to predict or explain disturbances such as fire or disease. We tested the sensitivity of the Excel version of the 3-PG model to soil properties and...
Accurate measurement of forest productivity is fundamental to understand the carbon balance of forested ecosystems. Recent changes in climate highlight the importance of developing methods to measure forest productivity so that sound economic and environmental decision can be made. Efforts to measure forest productivity across the landscape using remote sensing...
The portability and reduced price of unmanned aerial systems (UAS) in recent years has led to a broad range of new UAS-enabled scientific inquiries, including for forestry. Small, consumer-grade UAS are advantageous for forest measurements due to their portability, ease and safety of deployment, and notably, they are currently the...
Suspended sediment and in situ turbidity data from two western Oregon streams, Oak Creek and South Fork Hinkle Creek, were used to estimate annual sediment loads for the 2006 water year (October 1, 2005 to September 30, 2006). Water samples and in situ turbidity observations were taken following the Turbidity...
Total US lumber production in 2011 was 77.9 million cubic meters. Its primary use was for housing and construction. There is a growing concern that the structural properties for wood are being reduced as trees are harvested at much younger ages as the wood supply shifts from older to younger...
Three trends are occurring today in the United States which inspired this research. First, America is growing increasingly urbanized. Today, more Americans are living in cities than in rural environments, and this pattern is predicted to continue for the foreseeable future. Urban living has benefits, but there are also challenges...
In recent years, unoccupied aircraft systems (UAS) have become increasingly affordable and straightforward to incorporate in monitoring applications of forested ecosystems. This shift has facilitated interest in using these tools to monitor aspects of forest ecosystems including vegetation health, forest structure and composition, and potential habitat provided by these systems....
Data acquisition is the foundation of sound decision making. Therefore, after the work of the empiricist who laid the philosophical foundation of the data driven inference (Berkeley, 2003; Hume, 1902; Locke, 1860), significant efforts were carried in developing methods aiming at acquiring representative information for describing reality. The main instrument...
Forest management is typically associated with a high degree of uncertainty, since it relies on predictions of natural growth processes over long periods of time. A number of methods exist for mitigating the risk associated with this uncertainty, but few have the ability to explicitly minimize risk. This study will...
The goal of this study was to advance methods for assessment of forest road hydrologic
response and sediment yield at a catchment scale. This research looked at the effect of
soil depth estimation on the Distributive Hydrology Soil Vegetation Model (DHSVM),
assessed the uncertainty and accuracy of hydrologic modeling of...
Reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park (YNP) in 1995-96 provided a rare opportunity to observe the response of an ecosystem to the return of a top predator, including possible reversal of decades of decline of aspen, cottonwood, and tall willows suppressed by intensive herbivory on elk winter ranges. To...
Invasive vegetation control studies traditionally aim to control existing populations as well as limit future spread of the species. However, little additional attention has been dedicated to aiding native communities to recover and reestablish. One prominent example of a studied invasive is Brachypodium sylvaticum (Huds.) P. Beauv. (false brome), a...
Hemlock dwarf mistletoe (Arceuthobium tsugense subsp. tsugense) is an arboreal, hemiparasitic plant that principally parasitizes western hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla). Hemlock dwarf mistletoe exerts a profound influence on infected trees that can drastically change the structure of the tree crown due to reduced growth, top dieback, branch deformation and death, resulting...
There is a perceived trade-off between fire risk reduction and northern spotted owl habitat protection in dry-conifer forests in southwestern Oregon. Management options for balancing this trade-off need to be sought at the landscape level. Applied landscape ecology suggests three important features to consider are (1) patch size and configuration...
Soils contain the largest pool of carbon that is actively cycling on human timescales, leading many to view soils as a natural climate solution with multiple co-benefits. The field of soil science is rapidly evolving, but without a unified understanding of soil carbon dynamics. This dissertation leverages two distinct long-term...