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Biological and Physical Resources

An image of snow-capped Mount Hood with a blanket of fog covering forest below.
Welcome

Mount Hood is located 62 miles east of Portland, Oregon.  It is a stratovolcano.  It is located in the Mount Hood National Forest.  You might find salamanders living there.

 

Grey-spotted butterfly on a purple flower.
Welcome

Invite pollinators, like the Silvery Blue Butterfly (Glaucopsyche lygdamus), to your garden.  Dig up the lawn and add in some Asters or Claytonia.  Silvery Blue Butterflies can be found in flowery meadows, woodlands and in cities.  Ants tend the larvae!
 

 

Black salamander laying on a red leaf.
Welcome

Salamanders live coast to coast in North America.  Habitat destruction threatens their existence.  Keep an eye for them at temperate rainforests, coniferous forests, riparian zones and along alpine meadows along the rocky shores of lakes.

 

Welcome to Biological & Physical Resources

From improving air quality to enhancing streams and uplands for drinking water and wildlife in your National Forests & Grasslands, our programs cover a wide variety of topics and span the country.

Our Role
About BPR
Our Staff in Ink
What are we Doing
Join us in Nature

Our Role

The BPR staff works across the agency and with partners to help meet the agency’s land management and resource stewardship responsibilities. We help the agency carry out its conservation mission by helping to:

  • Protect, sustain, and improve the water and watershed resources and services.

  • Protect ecosystems by ensuring that proposed management activities promote conservation of biological diversity.

  • Restore deteriorated ecosystems to improve their health, diversity, and productivity.

  • Provide multiple benefits to people by enhancing ecosystem productivity, managing public access, and increasing public awareness

  • Improve organizational effectiveness through fostering a skilled and knowledgeable workforce, exhibiting collaborative decision making; helping to make the best science-based information available; and encouraging monitoring and evaluation to improve the effectiveness of our actions.

We work closely with our customers and partners in accomplishing our objectives. The health, diversity, and productivity of the water, wildlife, fish, and plant communities on National Forest System lands -- and opportunities for their use and enjoyment -- will be the measures of our success.

About the Biological and Physical Resources

Our Staff in Ink

New Publications

  • 3 tattoo photos including a hawk tattoo on thigh, little brown bat tattoo on shoulder, and a mingan moonwort tattoo on bicep.
    USFS colleagues across the agency "in ink" with nature loving tattoos.
    Hawk tattoo on thigh.  Image by LoveHawk. Little Brown Bat (Myotis lucifugus) tattoo on shoulder.  USFS Employee image. Mingan Moonwort (Botrychium minganese) tattoo on bicep.  USFS Employee image.

    Brett Roper, PhD (Aquatic Ecologist) of our National Stream and Aquatic Ecology Center, recently co-authored Did changes in western federal land management policies improve salmonid habitat in streams on public lands within the Interior Columbia River Basin? Environ Monit Assess (2019) 191:574, Brett B. Roper & W. Carl Saunders & Jeffrey V. Ojala Abstract of the Abstract: Historic management actions authorized or allowed by federal land management agencies have had a profound negative effect on salmon, trout, and char populations and their habitats. To rectify past failings, in the 1990s, federal agencies in the Interior Columbia River Basin modified how they conducted land management activities to foster the conservation of aquatic species. ... By understanding and accounting for how changes in stream conditions reflect improved land management policies and broader environmental trends, federal agencies will be better situated to make project level decisions that benefit aquatic resources. Keywords Streams . Monitoring . Land management . Trend . Salmonids . Pacific Northwest.

  • David Merritt, PhD (Riparian Ecologist) and Lindsay Reynolds, PhD (Riparian Ecologist) of our National Stream and Aquatic Ecology Center, recently co-authored a paper with colleagues, Prepare river ecosystems for an uncertain future; As the climate warms, we can’t restore waterways to pristine condition, but models can predict potential changes ... in the journal Nature about globally imperiled rivers and a call to action for river scientists worldwide. Dr. Merritt summarizes, "We present a four-step plan toward reshaping the kind of science that we are doing to protect rivers and ideas for engaging the public in recognizing their functions and services to society and steps toward their conservation and recovery. It is a compelling article and has been picked up by news outlets on the West coast and in New Zealand." Oregon State University Press Release

What We Are Doing

  • Fire & Aviation Application Information Website … BAER is part of this effort. 

  • 1000 Culverts! Improving resilience of road/stream crossings and ecological connectivity in collaboration with partners.

  • Cottonwood Safe Harbor Risk Assessment and Alternatives Analysis

  • Watershed Condition Framework (WCF) Priority Watershed Restoration Accomplishments.

  • New Cross-Section Hydraulic Analysis Tool: XStream; This new desktop software application allows users to accurately perform cross-section hydraulic analysis and is integrated with other technical tools that allow resource specialists to be more effective and efficient at designing stream/floodplain restoration projects, monitoring channel changes over time, and assessing water alteration impacts to aquatic and riparian habitat.

Join Us in Nature

Neighbors & Nature – Biological and Physical Resources ... and you.
Be Safe & Kind.
Pick up trash and haul it out.

Ideas for joining friends in nature… & schedule events in your September, October, November, and December calendar!

https://www.fs.usda.gov/managing-land/natural-resources/biological-physical-resources