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U.S. Forest Service
Caring for the land and serving people

United States Department of Agriculture

Pacific Northwest Research Station

Threat Characterization and Management

  • A prescribed burn conducted at the Fishlake National Forest, Utah, in 2020, showing flames and smoke in a forest.
    The Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment: Improving fire and smoke forecasting to protect public health

    Led by scientists Roger Ottmar and Sim Larkin with the Pacific Northwest Research...

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  • Helicopter dropping water on the Maple Fire in the Olympic National Forest.
    Fire and climate adaptation in west-side forests in Oregon and Washington

    It’s easy to assume that the forests on the western side of the Cascade Range are too wet to burn, but that’s changing. These lush coniferous...

    Read More
  • A researcher in Saipan, the largest of the Northern Mariana Islands, examines a tree infected with brown root rot.
    Tracking lineages of a root rot pathogen across Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands

    Mango, breadfruit, and many other tropical fruit trees are susceptible to brown root...

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  • An air resource advisor adjusts an air quality monitoring station during the 2019 Milepost 97 fire near Canyonville, Oregon.
    The U.S. Interagency Wildland Fire Air Quality Response Program

    Smoke from wildland fire is responsible for most of the hazardous air quality days...

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Program Overview

Mission

  • We generate knowledge about the nature, causes, and consequences of large, rapid, or significant changes to ecosystems that potentially threaten societal values.

Our Value

We develop and deliver innovative strategies, methods, and tools so people can understand, plan for, manage, or mitigate the changes, causes, and consequences of threats in the natural environment. We address biological, physical, social, and economic aspects of environmental change (like fire, climate, or species change) as disruptions to “normal” conditions threaten natural resource benefits people value.

Research Areas

Our Focus

  1. The cause, occurrence, extent, and consequences of threatening conditions and people’s perceptions of threats.
  2. Ecological or social processes interacting across multiple temporal and spatial scales to create potential threats.
  3. Thresholds in ecosystem dynamics; the biological, physical, and social consequences of crossing these thresholds; and perceptions of and responses to crossed thresholds.
  4. Ecological pattern and process management reducing the probability, magnitude, and consequences of a threat.
  5. Range of possible future conditions, and associated uncertainties and tradeoffs.

Our Expertise

  • Atmospheric science
  • Biological conservation
  • Botany
  • Climatology
  • Ecological modeling
  • Environmental management
  • Forest science
  • Molecular ecology
  • Plant ecology
  • Rangeland ecology
  • Smoke
  • Wildfire
  • Wildlife management

How We Work

Work in the program addresses five problems that provide a progression from fundamental understanding of threats; how processes interact across multiple scales; what thresholds (both ecological and social) are crossed when a potential threat becomes realized; what management strategies may be employed to address threats at multiple scales; and what conditions are likely to be important in the future.

Program Manager: 
Rollins, Matthew G.
Forestry Sciences Laboratory.
1133 N Western Avenue.
Wenatchee, WA 98801
Research Teams: 
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Contact Information

1220 SW 3rd Avenue, Suite 1400
Portland, OR 97204 | Get Directions

Phone: (503) 808-2100
Fax: (503) 808-2130

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