My thesis is an exploration of xánthiip (Karuk for black oak, Quercus kelloggii) restoration within the Karuk Tribe’s Ancestral Territory in present-day northwestern California. Black oak is a cultural keystone species for the Karuk and has been chosen as one of the species to guide Tribally led forest restoration work...
Wildfire impacts have intensified in many ecosystems across the western United States due to the combined impact of fire exclusion, climate change, and land management practices. However, on many of these landscapes, fire is a fundamental ecological process that has shaped vegetation structural and compositional diversity, ecosystem function, landscape pattern,...
Anthropogenic land-cover change and climate change are the major drivers of the steep loss of avian biodiversity in past decades. Loss of avian biodiversity is predicted to result in the reduction of ecosystem services and ecological functions. Identifying avian population changes and the drivers of these trajectories is essential for...
Private forest owners face an increasing risk of economic damage from extreme wildfires as the climate becomes warmer and drier. This thesis empirically estimates the influence of climate on private forest owners’ management decisions using plot-level data in the Pacific states of the U.S. Econometric models are specified where the...
Humboldt Redwoods State Park in southern Humboldt County, California is a coastal redwood forest, a highly unique and valued ecosystem. It has many social, cultural, ecological, and economic values, including recreational benefits, heritage and aesthetic values, high biodiversity, nutrient cycling, and climate regulation. However, Humboldt County is at risk of...
Managing wildlands to protect species and ecosystem services in response to climate change is challenging. To develop effective long-term strategies, natural resource managers need to account for the projected effects of climate change as well as the uncertainty inherent in those projections. Vegetation models are one important source of projected...
Increasingly, objectives for forests with moderate- or mixed-severity fire regimes are to restore successionally diverse landscapes that are resistant and resilient to current and future stressors. Maintaining native species and characteristic processes requires this successional diversity, but methods to achieve it are poorly explained in the literature. In the Inland...
Landscape characteristics can strongly influence demographic and genetic processes in wildlife populations. Climate change and human land use are causing many landscapes to change rapidly, and the effects on wildlife populations must be understood to properly manage these threats and design effective conservation strategies. In this dissertation, I explored the...
Correction: We discovered two typos and a change in a sentence needed in our published manuscript. Regarding the typos: timber estimates in Section 2 of the NWFP’s Long-Term Objectives should have been 2.34 million cubic meters annually instead of 234 million cubic meters annually and ~1.78 million cubic meters instead...
Wildfire in dry, frequent-fire forests is a pressing issue for natural resource managers, communities and politicians in the western United States. Area affected by wildfire has climbed steadily over the last twenty years and is expected to increase in the future. Recognition of the importance of both social and biophysical...