Wildfire impacts have increased in recent years. The management response outlined by recent policy initiatives (e.g., the National Fire Plan, Healthy Forests Restoration Act) emphasizes the use of prescribed fire and mechanized thinning to reduce the risk of future fire events. These policies also call for an unprecedented level of...
Forests in the Blue Mountains region of eastern Oregon and Washington are facing a large-scale forest health crisis. Poor forest conditions have greatly increased the risk of catastrophic wildfire. Resource managers in the Wallowa-Whitman, Umatilla, and Malheur National Forests are utilizing prescribed fire and mechanized thinning treatments to reduce hazardous...
The management of existing forest road systems is an issue of growing importance and public debate. Roads can alter the hydrologic processes in a watershed especially at stream crossing culverts where road ditches channel runoff directly into the stream. The objective of this study was to determine how surface runoff...
Forest roads produce fine sediment with traffic during wet weather. If the forest road is connected to a stream it can be a source of turbidity and fine sediment that may be detrimental to aquatic organisms especially salmonids.
The goal of this work was to investigate turbid runoff during wet-weather...
As part of a larger project funded by the Joint Fire Science Program, this annotated bibliography and accompanying subject area guide were created to support development of a compendium of social science research findings from 2000 – 2010 related to fire-adapted communities. In total, 242 articles were selected for analysis.
Wildland fire affects both public and private resources throughout the United States. A century of fire suppression has contributed to changing ecological conditions and accumulated fuel loads. Managers have used a variety of approaches to address these conditions and reduce the likelihood of wildland fires that may result in adverse...
As with other aspects of natural-resource management, the approach to managing wildland fires has evolved
over time as scientific understanding has advanced and the broader context surrounding management decisions has
changed. Prior to 2000 the primary focus of most fire research was on the physical and ecological aspects of fire;...
Within the wildland-urban interface (WUI), wildfire risk contains both individual and collective components.
The likelihood that a particular home will be threatened by wildfire in any given year is low, but
at a broader scale the likelihood that a home somewhere in the WUI will be threatened is substantially
higher....
There are many reasons for building an alliance among agencies and citizens in forest and rangeland communities. In the big picture, the purpose is primarily to reach decisions that are objectively better. Essentially, the quality of decisions is improved by a multi-agency effort that includes a role for citizens and...
Full Text:
Research Station
EricToman, The Ohio State University
A companion to the video program Collaborating for
There are many reasons for building an alliance among agencies and citizens in forest and rangeland communities. In the big picture, the purpose is primarily to reach decisions that are objectively better. Essentially, the quality of decisions is improved by a multi-agency effort that includes a role for citizens and...
There are many reasons for building an alliance among agencies and citizens in forest and rangeland communities. In the big picture, the purpose is primarily to reach decisions that are objectively better. Essentially, the quality of decisions is improved by a multi-agency effort that includes a role for citizens and...
There are many reasons for building an alliance among agencies and citizens in forest and rangeland communities. In the big picture, the purpose is primarily to reach decisions that are objectively better. Essentially, the quality of decisions is improved by a multi-agency effort that includes a role for citizens and...
The majority of social science research is cross-sectional in nature, with data collected at a single point in time. However, social systems are dynamic and many of the variables of interest to social scientists may change over time. Longitudinal research methods enable data collection at two or more points in...
No studies have evaluated the effects of limited vehicle access on movements, survival and habitat use of Roosevelt
elk (Cervus elaphus roosevelti) . We installed twenty gates, restricting motorized vehicle access by the public in
seven discrete Road Management Areas (RMAs), comprising 35% of the study area. We radio-tracked 31...
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...
Wildfire risk in temperate forests has become a nearly intractable problem that can be characterized as a socioecological “pathology”: that is, a set of complex and problematic interactions among social and ecological systems across multiple spatial and temporal scales. Assessments of wildfire risk could benefit from recognizing and accounting for...
Managers and policy-makers across broad disciplines and organizations are calling for a better understanding of public opinion on natural resource issues. One such issue is that of fire and its role in the management of our forests and rangelands. Public perceptions of fuel reduction techniques, with a particular emphasis on...
Wildfire management has grown increasingly complex in recent years,
particularly in the West and in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) where a steady
population growth has resulted in greater risk to people and property. Recent trends
suggest the process of recovering from large fires (>100,000 acres) will become
increasingly important to...
Intact sagebrush communities in the Great Basin are rapidly disappearing due
to invasion of non-native plants, large wildfires, and encroachment of pinyon pine
and juniper woodlands. Land management options include the use of prescribed
fire, grazing, herbicides and mechanical treatments to reduce the potential for
wildfire and restore plant communities....
Growing emphasis on ecosystem and landscape-level forest management across North America has spurred an examination of alternative management strategies which focus on emulating dynamic natural disturbance processes, particularly those associated with forest fire regimes. This topic is the cornerstone of research in the Blue River Landscape Study (BRLS) taking place...
Managing riparian areas in the dry forests of the intermountain west for diverse public values can create conflict, potentially limiting social acceptance in landscape-scale restoration projects. This thesis examined accelerated landscape-scale restoration as part of a broader shift toward ecosystem management on national forestland, which incorporates social values into forest...
In July of 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
activated the Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDLs) provisions of the
Clean Water Act. As the first river in Oregon to implement TMDL
regulations, people and agencies in the Tualatin basin face many
challenges. Non-point source pollution affects water quality in the...
This phenomenological research study focused on educational change as perceived by 16 Liberal Arts faculty members at a Pacific Northwest community college. Research data were collected through in-depth dialogic interviews and a follow-up dialogue session with six participants. The principal guiding research questions comprised the following: 1) What is the...
Two manuscripts are presented, each examining the potential impacts of emerging technologies on the economic feasibility of fuels reduction treatments on federal forest lands. Both manuscripts were prepared as part of the larger effort funded by the Institute for Working Forest Landscapes under the “Opportunities for biochar production to reduce...
Disasters result from hazards affecting vulnerable people. Most disasters research by anthropologists focuses on vulnerability; this article focuses on natural hazards. We use the case of wildfire mitigation on United States Forest Service lands in the northwestern United States to examine social, political, and economic variables at multiple scales that...
This Practical Guide is a companion to the video program Communication Strategies for Fire Management: Creating Effective Citizen-Agency Partnerships. The video is designed to assist land management personnel in working collaboratively with citizens for community fi re and fuel reduction strategies. The DVD uses real world examples from successful agency...
Populated and developed areas at the fringes of or intermixed with undeveloped landscapes are referred to as the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI). There are many unique benefits associated with living in the WUI that understandably attract people to move to them. However, there are also potential wildfire-related risks particular to...
Focus on Forestry is published by Oregon State University College of Forestry. Our goal is to keep Forestry alumni, friends, faculty, staff, and students informed about the College of Forestry and its many activities and programs.
The Bureau of Land Managements (BLM) Emergency Fire Rehabilitation (EFR) policy was developed in 1985 to encourage protection of sites from soil erosion and to minimize potential changes in vegetation communities that may result from the dominance of weedy species. To achieve the goals of EFR policy, managers often used...
A documented case history of riparian grazing at Oregon State University's Soap Creek Ranch was conducted from 1999 to 2001. Impacts of four different riparian grazing treatments were evaluated. Emphasis was placed on investigating the relationship between riparian cattle use and water quality. Through a series of carefully designed and...
Temperature was elevated approximately 4° C in a model stream relative to an unheated, but otherwise similar control stream. The streams were located outdoors, received identical amounts of exchange water from a nearby creek, and followed natural diurnal and seasonal temperature cycles Juvenile spring chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) were introduced...
Ocean acidification (OA) is the result of increasing concentrations of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, leading to a suite of alterations to specific parameters of ocean chemistry, which can negatively impact many marine organisms and ecosystems. Understanding how to measure and monitor the chemistry of OA will require specialized education...
Few studies have evaluated non-migratory Roosevelt elk (Cervus elaphus roosevelti)
interactions and habitat use on lands undergoing extensive timber removal. We captured and
radio-tracked for 14 months representatives from 29 different bands of elk across a 37,000 ha area
of Oregon's Coast Range. We identified 6 habitat variables within individual...
State-of-the-art personal robots need to perform complex manipulation tasks to be viable in complex scenarios. However, many of these robots, like the PR2, use manipulators with high degrees of freedom. High degrees of freedom are desirable from a functionality standpoint, but make the learning task more difficult by adding a...
A chair, once placed, will stay put until moved. Or will it? With the rise of technology being embeddable into everyday objects, what if that chair could move itself? Such robotic furniture has been featured in advertisements, art, and Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) research. Existing methods for operating robotic furniture have...
Within Oregon there is considerable interest in the possibility of converting woody biomass to energy. This interest stems from three converging factors: the desire to reduce the threat of uncharacteristic wildfire by removing excess material from the forests, the possibility to stimulate rural economies that are dependent on forest products,...
The research and analysis presented in this dissertation illustrate how individuals enact lived religion as they seek to navigate social inequalities. The enactment of lived religion involves directing attention towards orientations. I use the term orientations in the sense articulated by Ahmed (2004), to allude to how bodies are situated...