The integration of satellite image data with forest inventory plot data is a popular approach for mapping forest vegetation over large regions. Several methodological choices regarding spatial scale, mostly related to spatial resolution or grain, can profoundly influence forest maps developed from plot and imagery data. Yet often the consequences...
Across the western US, the two most prevalent native forest insect pests are mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae; a bark beetle) and western spruce budworm (WSB; Choristoneura freemani; a defoliator). MPB outbreaks have received more forest management attention than WSB outbreaks, but studies to date have not compared their...
AIM: Landscape management and conservation planning require maps of vegetation
composition and structure over large regions. Species distribution models
(SDMs) are often used for individual species, but projects mapping multiple species
are rarer. We compare maps of plant community composition assembled by
stacking results from many SDMs with multivariate maps...
The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), which aims to conserve late-successional and old-growth forests (older forests) and associated species, established new policies on federal lands in the Pacific Northwest USA. As part of monitoring for the NWFP, we tested nearest-neighbor imputation for mapping change in older forest, defined by threshold values...
This study investigated how lidar-derived vegetation indices, disturbance history from Landsat time series (LTS)
imagery, plot location accuracy, and plot size influenced accuracy of statistical spatial models (nearest-neighbor
imputation maps) of forest vegetation composition and structure. Nearest-neighbor (NN) imputation maps were
developed for 539,000 ha in the central Oregon Cascades,...
Kalapuya is described as a new, monotypic truffle genus in the Morchellaceae known only from the Pacific northwestern United States. Its relationship to other hypogeous genera within Morchellaceae is explored by phylogenetic analysis of the ribosomal LSU and EF1α protein coding region. The type species, K. brunnea, occurs in Douglas-fir...
Humans have drastically altered the physical habitat and food web structure of stream ecosystems. Two major impacts humans have had on Pacific Northwest streams are modification of streamside forests (as a result of agriculture, land development, and timber harvest), and declines in the return of wild anadromous salmon to headwater...
Informed conservation of small mammals, ecosystems, and predators requires a detailed understanding of how small mammals species and communities vary in both space and time, as well as the relative cyclicity and synchrony of this variation. This variation can be especially informative to land managers interested in manipulating the abundance...
Advancements in molecular biology and computer science have enabled researchers the ability to investigate the transcriptome – the quantification of an organism’s RNA transcripts in response to its environment on a system wide scale. The collective chapters of this thesis utilize high-throughput RNA sequencing, which produces hundreds of millions of...
For centuries, continental philosophy has clung to the belief that the world only meaningfully exists through human perception--that, in other words, when a tree falls in the forest, it does not make a sound. Literary theory, which has strong roots in continental philosophy, followed suit, remaining tied to humanism even...