Research Highlights

Managers rely on models of wildland fire to make critical decisions about fuels management, but existing models can be limited by simplistic data inputs that do not reflect the true complexity of wildland fuels. The U.S. USDA Forest Service, University of Washington, and Tall Timbers Research Station are collaborating to develop new 3D fuels data that can be used in next-generation fire and smoke models to support wildland fire and fuels management.

A beta version of the SoCal EcoServe tool will soon be available for the Los Padres, San Bernardino, Cleveland, and Angeles National Forests to help assess effects of 2020 wildfires and prepare postfire Natural Resource Damage Assessments. This tool provides a repeatable and transparent framework for quantifying the change in ecosystem services and their values associated with damage to natural resources on national forest lands.

Imagine you are inspecting a wood shipment and you suspect someone is smuggling mahogany, an endangered species. You could remove a small specimen, ship it to a distant laboratory, and wait days for an answer, or you could use FPL’s XyloTron to capture an image of the wood’s anatomy and get an answer in about 2 seconds. Instead of selecting only one or two boards to test in the laboratory, you could choose to test dozens of boards, and decide whether to detain the shipment.

This report describes and provides guidance for selection and use of pressure-treated wood for specific applications.

Lee Cerveny and Monika Derrien, research social scientists with the Pacific Northwest Research Station, examined how outdoor programs for veterans on public lands can use the inherent therapeutic value of nature to benefit veterans, particularly those experiencing posttraumatic stress. They identified the challenges and opportunities facing outdoor programs for veterans on public lands, highlighting how agency policies may shape the development of therapeutic landscapes.

State-of-the-art, lidar-based remote sensing technologies are high-precision tools that are being used to support cost-effective carbon monitoring systems around the world. Researchers at the Pacific Northwest Research Station and their colleagues developed an efficient sampling design and measurement protocol that can be used in combination with remote sensing data sources to estimate and model forest biomass and carbon at multiple scales. This method supports more accurate carbon monitoring in programs worldwide.

Juvenile wood in the southern pines is usually shown as a central core of wood surrounded by mature wood, the latter tapering down in thickness when moving from the base of a tree to its crown. The present study addresses the degree to which different juvenile wood depictions presented in the literature are applicable to a sampling of 70-yr-old longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) trees.

Degraded air quality due to smoke from wildland fires may exacerbate the respiratory effects of COVID-19, potentially increasing infection rates and worsening infection outcomes. To mitigate the health impacts from the confluence of smoke and COVID-19, researchers from the Pacific Northwest Research Station and their colleagues created a national Smoke-COVID dashboard to help agency personnel make decisions in situations where both smoke and COVID-19 are factors.

Wildfire smoke is the predominant cause of major air quality events in the United States that affect millions of Americans each year, causing significant negative health effects. To enhance the current air quality monitoring system across the country, researchers from the USDA Forest Service and the Environmental Protection Agencysupplemented existing monitoring systems with data from low-cost sensors, dramatically expanding the spatial coverage of air quality monitoring systems theUnited States. This air quality information is now publicly available for the first time in a map at AirNow.gov.

Forest resources are critical to environmental, economic, and social development. Therefore, understanding how global forest area will evolve in the future is important. This study used an updated Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) model to project total forest area through the year 2100 in 168 countries, using variables including income, rural population density, and the size of the labor force under different world visions of economic and demographic changes represented under the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs).

Expanding the use of cross-laminated timber (CLT) to outdoor applications is “one sticky problem.” Research must examine compatibility between adhesive and wood preservative, evaluate bond strength and wood failure under applied forces, and test bond durability to withstand accelerated weathering without delamination.

Climate change has caused “shrubification,” or increased shrub cover and size, across arctic and boreal ecosystems. Shrubification can have broad impacts on the ecosystem, so consistent information about the spatial variability and structure of shrub vegetation is needed to support managers and decisionmakers. Researchers at the Pacific Northwest Research Station and their colleagues have developed a new method to consistently and efficiently assess shrub cover on montane and subalpine regions from airborne imagery

Timber bridge design advances support construction of cost-effective and durable timber bridges.

FPL researchers predict the future! Will this new wood structure be safe and durable in the climate for which it is designed?

FPL researchers in Wood Durability and Protection investigate the contributions of leaf litter accumulation to the decay of wood in above ground exposure.

Large swaths of dead trees across a landscape pose an extreme fire hazard, as seen in the southern Sierra Nevada range of California. Researchers developed a method that uses remote sensing and spectral sensing to pre-emptively identify drought-stressed trees. Forest managers can use this advance notice to prioritize management actions to lessen the risk of wide-spread tree mortality.

Conventional polymer processing equipment and food grade processing aids were used to continuously extrude high strength sheets of cellulose nanofibrils.

With a topography marked by mountain passes and canyons, fire behavior is challenging to predict in southern California, particularly when driven by strong Santa Ana winds. Scientists analyzed wind speed and direction—critical information for predicting fire spread—on days when fires ignite, both during Santa Ana and non-Santa Ana conditions. They also identified geographic gaps in the meteorological station network where strategic placement of additional stations would provide information useful to predicting fire risk.

Scientists find a safer, less costly, and noninvasive method for monitoring northern spotted owl. Strategically placed recording units detected calls of northern spotted owls and barred owls over a range of forest conditions. These findings are being used to design and inform the transition from mark-recapture to passive bioacoustics as the primary monitoring method for northern spotted owl populations under the Northwest Forest Plan effectiveness monitoring program.

Landscape-scale management to reduce wildfire risk in frequent-fire forest ecosystems of the western United States calls for coordination and buy-in from many diverse landowners. Researcher social scientist Susan Charnley with the Pacific Northwest Research Station and her colleagues examined multiple “all lands” projects for fuels reduction and management in Oregon and California to identify the most important principles and tools that promote collective action for wildfire risk reduction. This information acts as a framework supporting policymakers and land managers working to reduce wildfire risk across multi-ownership landscapes.