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We used a common garden study to quantify variation in growth and drought resistance traits in 99 populations of Elymus elymoides from a broad geographic and climatic range in the western United States. Ecotypes from drier sites produced less biomass and smaller seeds, and had traits associated with greater drought resistance: small leaves with low osmotic potential and high integrated water use efficiency (δ13C). Seasonality also influenced plant traits. Plants from regions with relatively warm, wet summers had large seeds, large leaves, and low δ13C. Irrespective of climate, we also observed trade‐offs between biomass production and drought resistance traits. Together, these results suggest that much of the phenotypic variation among E. elymoides ecotypes represents local adaptation to differences in the amount and timing of water availability. In addition, ecotypes that grow rapidly may be less able to persist under dry conditions. Land managers may be able to use this variation to improve restoration success by seeding ecotypes with multiple drought resistance traits in areas with lower precipitation. The future success of this common rangeland species will likely depend on the use of tools such as seed transfer zones to match local variation in growth and drought resistance to predicted climatic conditions.
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The results of this study suggest that mowing, as a standalone
treatment, does not restore the herbaceous understory in degraded Wyoming big sagebrush plant communities. Mowing should not be applied in Wyoming big sagebrush plant communities with degraded understories without additional treatments to limit exotic annuals and promote perennial herbaceous vegetation.
Access the Socioeconomic Profile tool
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Socioeconomic Profile tool is a free, web-based tool created by Headwaters Economics to help government agency land managers, economists, planners, outreach specialists, researchers, citizen/private sectors, and others explore socioeconomic conditions near Service units.
Webinar recording.
This seminar builds of the March 9, 2023 “Community-focused programs, datasets, and planning resources for wildfire risk mitigation” seminar (presenters: Greg Dillon, Eva Karau, Kelly Pohl) by focusing on how to support creation of fire-resilient communities. In particular, the presentation will highlight how the paired parcel risk and social data approach developed by the Wildfire Research (WiRē) Team supports action on private land parcels, across parcels within a community, and across boundaries to nearby public land. The WiRē Team is an established interagency research-practice team that provides wildfire mitigation and research expertise, data collection tools, and products for community wildfire education and mitigation programs.
Access free online course.
You can enroll yourself in this on-demand online course once you enter the Wildland Fire Learning Portal. Select “How to Use IFTDSS for Rx Burn Plans” on the righthand side.
Webinar recording.
Description: This webinar will go over results of a recent literature review of studies that focus on the environmental justice aspects of wildfire, as well as present preliminary findings on how different socio-demographic groups have been affected by wildfires across California in the last decade.
Presenter: Francisco Escobedo; US Forest Service Pacific Southwest Research Station
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This study found evidence of a gap between risk perceptions of WUI residents and wildfire professionals. On average, residents underestimated the overall risk of their property. One third of the study participants reported having a neighbor that they think is increasing their risk. Perceived likelihood of fire reaching the property and causing damages was positively correlated with perceiving a neighbor is not taking action. The only consistent predictor of defensible space was the level of defensible space on neighboring properties. Our results suggest that programs that are effective in getting single homeowners to mitigate risk may have benefits that spillover to neighboring properties, and risk neutral/tolerant individuals lived on parcels that were rated by the professional as having less defensible space and more ignitable structure materials.
Several important paths to improved success of native plant restoration are clear: recognize and leverage intraspecific variation and local adaptation in plants, increase the development and use of seed transfer guidance, build seed production partnerships to benefit restoration and local communities, and be ready and willing to adopt changes to the way things are done when the evidence is clear that change will help.
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The key to grazing that will enhance watershed dynamics is encompassed in the basic ingredients of watershed management, i.e., managing for water efficiency. These ingredients, which have been stated by Barrett (1990), are to CAPTURE, STORE, and SAFELY RELEASE water on watersheds.
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Frequent-fire forests of the western United States have undergone remarkable changes in structure, composition, and function due to historical exclusion of naturally occurring fire. Mechanized tree thinning to reduce forest density and fuel loads tends to be expensive and cannot be effectively implemented across all lands, and there is increasing interest in managing naturally ignited wildfires for meeting forest restoration objectives. To investigate general effectiveness of resource objective (RO) wildfires for restoring frequent-fire and associated forests of the western United States, a review of the related peer-reviewed literature was conducted.
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