In fire-prone savannas and forests, juvenile trees are subjected to heat-caused injury and mortality in surface fires. Escaping these effects is contingent on weathering the heat via investment in protection or utilizing resprouting from dormant buds. While ubiquitous in angiosperms, gymnosperms rarely basally resprout following fire; however, Pinus echinata (shortleaf pine), native to the southeastern USA, resprouts following top-kill. To better understand post-fire resprouting, we tracked 193 P. echinata seedlings over 22 months in a frequently burned shortleaf pine-oak-hickory stand in northern Florida, USA. We mapped individual seedlings in transects across a 4-hectare site and made repeated measurements of height and number of sprouting ramets. The study site contained an abundance of P. echinata seedlings, averaging 2,412 seedlings ha−1. Ramet production was prolific, with each seedling supporting an average of 23.0 (SD = ± 21.4) ramets two months post fire, decreasing to 8.9 (SD = ± 13.9) ramets per seedling 22 months post fire. The height of the primary ramet grew an average of 121.8 (SD = ± 65.5) cm over the study period. Documenting P. echinata resprouting dynamics can provide valuable insight to the likely persistence of seedlings in frequent fire regimes.
We report on the 25-year results of a long-term experiment on the Olympic Peninsula, WA comparing a pure Douglas-fir to a mixed Douglas-fir and red alder plantation that was designed to increase the time and space for early-seral habitat. The early-seral stage in Pacific Northwest forests has been greatly diminished driven in part by a reduction in harvests on National Forest land, prioritization of late-seral habitat, and more effective vegetation control. Recent research on early-seral forests highlights the many plant and animal species dependent on this stage and the value of species like red alder in restoring soils, especially those degraded by intense wildfire. In this paper, we evaluate a long-term ecosystem productivity study located on the Olympic Peninsula, WA that seeks to add in early-seral elements to standard rotations by planting red alder and comparing this to a standard Douglas-fir monoculture. Despite some initial implementation challenges that altered the desired species contrast and limited the number of alder planted, we found initial significant alder effects before age 17, including 4.5 × higher stand basal area and 2.9 × higher aboveground biomass. These effects did not persist as the stand developed though. However, significant block differences were observed with deeper, less rocky soils showing more alder effect. Other interspecies interactions between blocks were also observed, including higher Douglas-fir seedling survival in mixed stands compared to pure Douglas-fir, large effects of naturally regenerating hemlock, and reduced salal cover associated with increased alder cover. These somewhat subtle interim results suggest that fine-tuning sites or altering early-seral strategies for different sites will be important in more widely adopting plantations geared to restoring early-seral elements in these intensively managed systems.
Using a tightly controlled, forested GPS test course located in Athens, Georgia, two smartphones, an iPhone 13 Pro (iOS) and Google Pixel 6 Pro (Android), were assessed to better understand their positional accuracy under different forest conditions and stand types. Additionally, a high precision external GNSS antenna was also assessed. With a focus on how professional foresters typically use their smartphones when collecting Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data in the forest (i.e., single static position fixes, at approximate waste height, and with minimal wait times before collection), we found that, generally, the root mean square error (RMSE) (m) of both the iPhone 13 Pro and Google Pixel 6 Pro were statistically significantly different, with the Google Pixel 6 Pro outperforming the iPhone 13 Pro by 1 to 3 m in both an older natural loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) stand and in an older mixed upland hardwood stand under leaf-off and leaf-on conditions. Forestry professionals, on average, may expect between 2 to 6 m accuracy when using a smartphone in some southern forests. If one is capable of making an additional investment, a high precision external antenna that can be coupled with both iOS and Android devices at a cost comparable to mapping-grade GNSS receiver technology, may consistently achieve submeter accuracy in some forests without the need for real time kinematic (RTK) assistance. Awareness of the uncertainty associated with smartphones is important when incorporating these data into more advanced forestry applications.
Wildfires can cause prolonged disruptions to public land access, affecting nearby local economies. As recreationists with varying levels of knowledge of wildfire increasingly visit fire-prone areas, reaching diverse audiences through non-traditional communication channels like local businesses offers novel opportunities for increasing engagement and outreach capacity. Business preparation for wildfire risk is central to developing fire adapted communities, yet little qualitative research has sought to capture their role in broader efforts to mitigate risks and impacts. We conducted semi-structured interviews with local business owners and employees, land managers, government representatives, and economically oriented local non-profits to explore how local businesses in Flagstaff, Arizona, USA, navigate wildfire impacts and to better characterize their role in human-caused wildfire prevention education. We found that local businesses experienced varying wildfire-related impacts defined by their relationships to, and dependence on, public lands for revenue, and were already informally acting as community stewards of fire prevention education but lacked the resources to develop cohesive and accurate messaging. We also offer recommendations for more intentional partnerships between businesses and agencies to leverage prevention education capacity and extend the scale and scope of outreach to public land users. Together, these findings can inform a more concerted approach to human-caused wildfire prevention that protects the interdependent relationship between public land management, wildfires, and local economy.
We present a case study where loggers thinned and managed brush in longleaf pine stands that went unmanaged for a lengthy period in Trinity County, Texas, USA. Stands were overstocked and had a dense, shrubby understory from years of fire exclusion. Our main objectives were to compare the outcomes and cost-savings of loggers selecting trees to thin, or “operator select”, versus timber marking, and whether they were different when attempting to restore longleaf pine stands to an open structure. We also worked closely with loggers to manage brush in place of conventional forestry mulching as a source of additional cost-savings. Twenty-one inventory plots were sampled during prethinning and post-thinning treatment stages, with half marked and the other half left unmarked. The location of unmarked plots was undisclosed to loggers and harvested by operator select methods. We measured no significant difference in forest inventory metrics at marked and unmarked plots following thinning. There was, however, better retention of longleaf pine and removal of loblolly pine in marked areas, and overall precision was higher in marked areas. QMD increased across all plots, woody vegetation decreased significantly, and reestablishment of herbaceous groundcover increased after following thinning with prescribed burning. Using this approach, an estimated 197.53 US per hectare cost for timber marking and879.34 US per hectare for conventional mulching services was saved. After reimbursing loggers for brush management services, this amounted to an estimated 876.35 US per hectare reduction in project cost to create open longleaf pine structure. When implementing operator select in longleaf pine stands, our results indicate that providing feedback to well qualified loggers can create comparable results to timber marking at a discounted cost, but with small tradeoffs in precision.
