Bøger af Forest Service

Cultural resources refer to the physical evidence of human occupations that cultural resource specialists and archaeologists use to reconstruct the past. This includes the objects, location, and landscapes that play a significant role in the history or cultural traditions of a group of people. Cultural resources include artifacts of historical significance left by prehistoric aboriginal peoples. Archaeological constituents, the basic units of archaeological analysis, consist of artifacts and features. Artifacts include carved objects, pottery, and ceramics, flaked and ground stones, faunal and floral remains, glass, and metal. Features include earthen works, rock art, midden soils, and structured. Cultural resources are at risk of being damaged by wildfires as well as active natural resource management. In Canada and the United States, managers have legal requirements to protect cultural resources during fuels treatments, restoration activities, wildfire suppression, and post-fire rehabilitation. The successful implementation of prescribed burning and wildfire suppression in cultural resources sensitive areas requires integration of cultural resources and wildland fire science. Knowledge of the local archeology, artifact materials, site types, and context is essential to minimizing the negative impacts of all management activities. Likewise, understanding fuels, fire behavior, and heat transfer mechanisms is key to predicting, managing, and monitoring the effects of fire on cultural resources. This volume of the "Rainbow Series" synthesizes the relationships between fire and cultural resources. It presents the reader with the context of contemporary fire use and how these fire management tactics may affect prehistoric and historic cultural resources. It synthesizes the impacts of fire and fire management on various types of cultural resources and identifies management strategies to minimize negative impact on cultural resources.

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) forests are declining across most of their range in North America because of the combined effects of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreaks, fire exclusion policies, and the exotic pathogen Cronartium ribicola, which infects five-needle white pines and causes the disease white pine blister rust. The loss of this high-elevation tree species poses serious consequences for upper subalpine ecosystems, both in terms of impacts on biodiversity and losses in ecosystem processes; whitebark pine is now a candidate species for listing under the Endangered Species Act. Large, nutritious seeds produced by whitebark pine are an important food for many bird and small mammal species, as well as grizzly (Ursus arctos horribilis) and black bears (Ursus americanus), and whitebark pine communities provide habitat for many additional wildlife species. Whitebark pine seed dispersal by Clark's nutcrackers (Nucifraga columbiana) combined with hardy seedlings results in early whitebark pine community development after fire and other disturbances; whitebark pine seedlings survive on harsh, arid sites and may act as nurse trees to less hardy conifers and vegetation. Whitebark pine at higher elevations, where it is common in many regions, helps regulate snow melt and reduce soil erosion. For these collective functions, whitebark pine is considered both a keystone species for promoting community diversity and a foundation species for promoting community stability. Since more than 90 percent of whitebark pine forests exist on public land in the United States and Canada, it is important that government natural resource management agencies play an important role in ensuring future presence of this tree species by initiating concerted, coordinated, and comprehensive restoration efforts. This is best accomplished through a coordinated, trans-boundary restoration strategy that includes shared infrastructure and expertise for conserving seeds, growing blister rust-resistant seedlings, protecting trees, restoring ecosystem processes, and promoting natural regeneration. We detail a multi-scale strategy for restoring whitebark pine across its range in the western United States and Canada. The strategy was compiled by researchers, land managers, and resource specialists for use as a reference for prioritizing, designing, and implementing successful whitebark pine restoration activities across many scales from stands to landscapes to its entire range. The whitebark pine restoration strategy consists of the following principles: (1) promote rust resistance, (2) conserve genetic diversity, (3) save seed sources, and (4) employ restoration treatments. These guiding principles are then used to implement the whitebark pine restoration strategy using a set of possible actions: 1. assess condition, 2. plan activities, 3. reduce pest impacts, 4. gather seed, 5. grow seedlings, 6. protect seed sources, 7. implement restoration treatments, 8. plant burned areas, 9. support research, and 10. monitor activities. The strategy is also organized by six spatial scales of analysis and organization: 1. range-wide, 2. region (National Forest Region or Provincial Regions), 3. forest (National Forest, National Park, and Canadian Forest District), 4. landscape (watershed or landform), 5. stand, and 6. tree. At each scale, we present four important factors in the restoration strategy: (1) assessment, (2) restoration actions, (3) management concerns, and (4) an example. Strategic restoration plans are presented for the coarse-scale strategies, while illustrated examples are presented for the finer scales (tree, stand, and landscape).

Reviews have been conducted by Federal oversight agencies and blue ribbon panels to identify causal factors of the unprecedented fire suppression costs and to suggest possible modifications to Federal fire management policy and strategies (USDOI, USDA 2004; USDAOIG 2006; GAO 2007, 2009). Agency and panel member reviews have found that Federal agencies with wildland fire responsibilities are not able to quantify the value of fire management activities in terms of reducing wildfire risk to social, economic, and ecological values. In response, the Wildland Fire Leadership Council's (WFLC) monitoring strategy asked: What are the trends and changes in fire hazard on Federal lands? Fire risk assessment requires an understanding of the likelihood of wildfire by intensity level and the potential beneficial and negative effects to valued resources from fire at different intensity levels. This monitoring study was conducted to meet three broad goals: (1) address the WFLC monitoring question regarding fire hazard on Federal lands; (2) develop information useful in prioritizing where fuels treatments and mitigation measures might be proposed to address significant fire hazard and risk; and (3) respond to critiques by Office of Management and Budget, General Accounting Office, and Congress that call for risk-based performance measures to document the effectiveness of fire management programs. The results of this monitoring study are useful for project planning to quantify the potential effects of proposed actions in terms of reducing risk to specific resources of concern. Developing decision support tools that utilize an appropriate risk management framework would address many of the issues identified within government oversight reports. Specifically, the Office of Inspector General (USDAOIG 2006) reviewed USDA Forest Service (FS) large fire costs and directed that the "FS must determine what types of data it needs to track in order to evaluate its cost effectiveness in relationship to its accomplishments. At a minimum, FS needs to quantify and track the number and type of isolated residences and other privately owned structures affected by the fire, the number and type of natural/cultural resources threatened, and the communities and critical infrastructure placed at risk." The application of fire risk and fire hazard analyses has been demonstrated at the watershed and National Forest scales (Ager and others 2007). There, specific details regarding probabilities of fire and fire intensity are linked with specific resource benefit and loss functions (Ager and others 2007). Expanding these detailed analyses to regional and national scales to provide consistent risk assessment processes is complicated by the required data specificity and difficulty in developing loss-benefit functions for the range of human and ecological values. The research effort described in this report is designed to develop, from a strategic view, a first approximation of how both fire likelihood and intensity influence risk to social, economic, and ecological values at the national scale. The approach uses a quantitative risk framework that approximates expected losses and benefits from wildfire to highly valued resources (HVR). The information gathered in this study can be summarized in tabular and map formats at many different scales using administrative boundaries or delineations of HVR such as built structure density. The overall purpose of the analysis is to provide a base line of current conditions for monitoring trends in wildfire risk over time. Future analyses would be used to determine trends and changes in response to fuel reduction investments, climate shifts, and natural disturbance events (e.g., bark beetles) between the timeframes analyzed. Monitoring data could be used to address national and regional questions regarding changes in fire risk and hazard as a result of investment strategies or changing conditions.

Experimental research and species distribution modeling predict that large changes in the distributions of species and vegetation types will occur due to climate change. Species responses will depend not only on their physiological tolerances but also on their phenology, establishment properties, biotic interactions (Brown and others 1997), and ability to evolve and migrate (Davis and Shaw 2001). The capacity of species and, thus, their distributions to respond to a warming environment also will be affected by changing disturbance regimes and other global change factors (Turner 2010). Because individual species respond to climate variation and change independently and differently, plant assemblages with no modern analogs can be expected (Williams and Jackson 2007). New plant assemblages might also arise in areas where novel climatic conditions develop (Williams and Jackson 2007). Support for predictions of novel climate regimes and corresponding plant assemblages is found in studies examining relationships among paleo-climate and plant community reconstructions. As Williams and Jackson (2007) pointed out: (1) many past ecological communities are compositionally unlike modern communities; (2) the formation and dissolution of past "no-analog" communities appear to be climatically driven and linked to climates without modern analogs; (3) many future climate regimes will probably lack modern analogs; and (4) novel communities and surprises should be expected in the future. Novel climate conditions coupled with vegetation communities that lack modern analogs pose significant challenges for resource managers. Accurate predictions of how species distributions will change under future warming are essential for developing effective strategies for maintaining and restoring sustainable ecosystems (Harris and others 2006). Several factors make predicting how species distributions and vegetation communities will change difficult. Global Circulation Models (GCMs) exhibit significant variation in forecasts of future temperature and especially precipitation (Christensen and others 2007). This variation is often amplified for topographically variable areas such as the Interior West (Rehfeldt 2006; Saenz-Romero and others 2010). In addition, information on species' relationships to climate variables is often lacking and must be inferred from data on current species distributions. And other factors such as competitive interactions with other species and disturbance regimes often obfuscate interpretation of species climate profiles in projected future climate space. In grassland, shrubland, and desert ecosystems, our understanding of likely changes in climate is limited. Also, we lack information on the climate profiles of the vast majority of species. Here, we provide (1) current forecasts for changes in climate over the remainder of the century and (2) available predictions for changes in regional vegetation types and individual species distributions. We then discuss the types of approaches that can be used to increase our predictive capacity and the research needs for these ecosystems.

Forests, rangelands, and other open spaces provide a broad array of ecological benefits, including critical habitat for protected species, drinking water, wood products, carbon storage, and scenic and recreational opportunities. Large, destructive wildfires threaten these values and communities adjacent to these lands. Large investments in wildland fire suppression and fuel reduction activities are being made throughout the United States in ongoing efforts to reduce human and ecological losses from wildfire (USDA and USDI 2001; Public Law 108-148 2003; Sexton 2006). Managing these investments is a challenge to multiple Federal, State, and local agencies as decision makers attempt to reduce wildfire risk over extensive areas while balancing public expectations with finite budgets (Agee 2002; Dicus and Scott 2006; Johnson and others 2006; Sexton 2006; Winter and Bigler-Cole 2006). Landscape-scale changes in vegetation structure and fuel loadings must be accomplished in order to significantly alter wildfire behavior, reduce wildfire losses, and achieve longer-term fire resiliency (for example, Agee and others 2000; Finney 2001; Peterson and others 2003; Graham and others 2004). However, the most efficient way to achieve these long-term landscape goals remains unclear, and there are different perceptions on the relative role and effectiveness of management activities versus natural and managed wildfire to reduce fuels (cf. Agee 2002; Finney and Cohen 2003; Reinhardt and others 2008). The FLAME Act of 2009 requires the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service and the U.S. Department of Interior to submit to Congress a Cohesive Wildfire Management Strategy. In this report, we explore the general science available for a risk-based approach to fire and fuels management and suggest analyses that may be applied at multiple scales to inform decisionmaking and tradeoff analysis. We discuss scientific strengths and limitations of wildfire risk assessment frameworks, including the benefit of broad scalability as demonstrated by four recent case studies. We further highlight the role of comparative risk assessment, which extends the analysis to include the decision space available to managers and stakeholders to allow them to explore the tradeoffs between alternative courses of action. We identify scientific limitations of the analytical protocol and discuss questions of how to better address climate change, smoke modeling issues, and socioeconomic vulnerability, and how to better quantify treatment effectiveness. Key challenges are: achieving a balance between retaining analytical flexibility at regional and sub-regional planning scales while simultaneously retaining data and methodological consistency at the national scale, and identifying and aligning regional and national priorities to inform multi-objective strategy development. As implementation proceeds, the analytical protocol will no doubt be modified, but the contents of this report comprise a rigorous and transparent framework for comparative risk assessment built from the best available science.

Fire suppression in the last century has resulted in forests with excessive amounts of biomass, leading to more severe wildfires, covering greater areas, requiring more resources for suppression and mitigation, and causing increased onsite and offsite damage to forests and watersheds. Forest managers are now attempting to reduce this accumulated biomass by thinning, prescribed fire, and other management activities. These activities will impact watershed health, particularly as larger areas are treated and treatment activities become more widespread in space and in time. Management needs, laws, social pressures, and legal findings have underscored a need to synthesize what we know about the cumulative watershed effects of fuel management activities. To meet this need, a workshop was held in Provo, Utah, on April, 2005, with 45 scientists and watershed managers from throughout the United States. At that meeting, it was decided that two syntheses on the cumulative watershed effects of fuel management would be developed, one for the eastern United States, and one for the western United States. For the western synthesis, 14 chapters were defined covering fire and forests, machinery, erosion processes, water yield and quality, soil and riparian impacts, aquatic and landscape effects, and predictive tools and procedures. We believe these chapters provide an overview of our current understanding of the cumulative watershed effects of fuel management in the western United States. This document is the result of a major interdisciplinary effort to synthesize our understanding of the cumulative watershed effects of fuel management. This document is the product of more than 20 authors and 40 reviewers including scientists from four Forest Service Research Stations and numerous universities. Chapter topics include overviews of the effects of fuel management on both terrestrial and aquatic watershed processes.

This field guide details the most commonly encountered diseases and insects of forest trees in the Rocky Mountain Region. Descriptions of diseases, insects, and physical injuries focus on the most diagnostic features of each. Photographs, line drawings, and tables are used to illustrate and emphasize characteristics described in the text. Diseases and insects in plains hardwood trees are not covered in depth. Ornamental trees are sometimes affected by the diseases or insects included in this guide but may not be specifically mentioned as hosts. This guide presents diseases and then insects. Entries are arranged according to the part of trees typically damaged by the agent described. The disease section describes dwarf and true mistletoes, decays (including root diseases and stem decays), cankers, wilts, rusts, foliage diseases, shoot blights, and abiotic injuries and miscellaneous diseases. The insect section describes bark beetles, defoliators, wood borers, sap-sucking insects, gall formers, mites, and bud and shoot insects. At the end of the guide is a subject index, a host-pest index to damaging agents by tree species and part of the tree affected, and a glossary of terms. The host-pest index provides a rapid means of assessing the number and variety of agents described for each tree species. This field guide applies to the USDA Forest Service's Rocky Mountain Region, which includes Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas, and Nebraska. Additional hosts, diseases, and insect pests may be encountered outside this Region that are not included here, and a few of the diseases and insects included in this guide may not be seen in other areas. Plant pathologists and entomologists are available to assist resource managers with identification of insects and pathogens encountered in the forests.

A U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USFS) call for research proposals in 2001 addressed rebuilding USFS capability to address problems in fire-adapted ecosystems and in the wildland-urban interface. This effort supported the National Fire Plan and the 10-year comprehensive fire strategy. The National Fire Plan goals were to ensure sufficient firefighting resources for the future, rehabilitate and restore fire-damaged ecosystems, reduce fuels (combustible forest materials) in forests and rangelands at risk, especially near communities, and work with local residents to reduce fire risk and improve fire protection. Each proposal included the proposed research, development, and implementation activities that would be undertaken over a 5-year period, as well as the expected outcomes from these activities. The major topic headings for proposals were firefighting, rehabilitation and recovery, hazardous fuel reduction, and community assistance. Funding was distributed according to a formula developed by national team leaders within the USFS with firefighting receiving 34 percent of the funds, rehabilitation and recovery 20 percent, hazardous fuel reduction 35 percent, community assistance 10 percent, and Washington office administration 1 percent. This allocation reflected the judgment of national team leaders about the relative magnitude of needs and the alignment of the program with the National Fire Plan goals and objectives. It took into account the serious need for pivotal core fire science development and the eligibility of the social sciences across all four topics. The Wildland Recreation and Urban Cultures Research Work Unit of the Pacific Southwest Research Station was funded through this allocation within the community assistance topic area. In the proposal, we noted that fire events often have a large impact on recreation and tourism, yet these issues had not been addressed from a social science perspective. These impacts are due to the direct short- and long-term biophysical effects of fires, and indirect or induced effects owing to firefighting operations, fuel treatments, area closures, and other disruptions to social systems. Local populations are affected, as are visiting populations, and these effects are particularly acute in wildlands near urban areas. Understanding and managing these impacts would be improved by scientific study of the values, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors of the affected populations in relation to fire events, fire management, and fire effects. Unit work focused on three research objectives: Examine values/attitudes and behaviors of recreation residence owners and year-round residents in the wildland-urban interface; Examine recreationists' perceptions about fire suppression and postfire forest health issues; and Examine perceptions and beliefs about recreation activities and impacts to fire-prone ecosystems in the wildland-urban interface. In the first year of funding, we developed research and cooperative relationships with people in California, Colorado, Florida, Michigan, and Washington. Our work over the years has increased considerably, and the unit has conducted research studies in many locations across the United States. We report 17 of these studies grouped into four major topical headings: recreation use, communication, program evaluation and interface residents, and trust.

The objectives of this guide are to define and standardize nation maintenance management, inspection and operating procedures to ensure safe and efficient operations. Also to provide guidance and familiarization training to employees with the policies, procedures and practices associated with the duties. Lastly to provide employees with broad guidance for attaining approval on the national inter-agency inspectors list.

The increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has raised concern about the vulnerability of forests to potential changes in climate and climate variability. These concerns have prompted governments around the world to commission technical assessments on the impact of climate change on the environment and the economy. Based on the current scientific information within these assessments, governments have initiated negotiations on policy action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to address the vulnerabilities of the ecological, economic, and social systems to climate change. Critical to policy formulation is a periodic synthesis of the ever-expanding knowledge on forest ecology, the impact of climate on the forests and of forests on climate, forest management, the socio-economic value of trees and forests, and the role of forests in the global carbon cycle. The Forest Service conducts periodic assessments of the condition of forest and rangeland resources under the authority of the Renewable Resources Planning Act (RPA). The structure of these periodic assessments allows for the synthesis and integration of the current state of scientific knowledge. As part of the RPA process, this report synthesizes current information that assesses the impact of climate change on US forests. Six policy questions critical to understanding the impact of global climate change on current and future trends form the basis for this report. The first chapter describes mandates and structures of synthesizing scientific information on the forest sector, describes current understandings of the global climate, and closes with policy questions addressed in this assessment. The next chapters address the six policy questions of: what are the likely effects of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide and prospective climate changes on ecosystem productivity, as measured by changes in net primary productivity?, to what geographic extent will potential ecosystem types change or move across the US, as measured in composition and boundary changes?, what changes in forest productivity will occur as measured by changes in volume, growth and biomass?, what are the potential impacts on the forest sector under climate change, as measured by employment and timber prices?, when forest policy questions for the RPA Assessment, such as reduced NFS harvest, are examined with and without climate change, do the forest sector impacts differ greatly in magnitude or kind?, and what are the opportunities and costs of emissions mitigation using forest ecosystem management and forest product technologies?

Invasive species significantly impact US ecosystems and are one of the greatest threats to forest, rangeland, and urban forest health. They have contributed to increases in fire frequency and intensity; reduced water resources, forest growth, and timber; and negatively affected native species and their habitats throughout the United States. Global trade, climate change, and innovations in human transportation are just a few of the factors that have increased the rate of invasive species introduction and the costs associated with their prevention, quarantine, and management. Forest and rangeland managers urgently need effective management techniques to reduce invasive species' effects. In 2006, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Forest Service Research and Development Invasive Species Strategic Program Area (SPA) solicited programmatic feedback through a formal external peer review. The SPA used this information to guide long-term national planning for our research program. The National Research and Development Invasive Species Strategy was revised to reflect this guidance, and research efforts were prioritized to address the challenges managers will face in the future. Scientists developed twelve visionary papers that responded to the feedback. The visionary papers identify future invasive species research issues and priorities and provide the Forest Service and its partners with a framework for programming and budgeting for the next twenty years.

The known effects of past actions and the unique character of the Lake Tahoe basin have led to broad-based support for substantive conservation and restoration efforts over the last two decades. Increased attention and funding over the past decade, in particular, have resulted in remarkable progress toward restoration goals, along with considerable information on the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to addressing the substantial restoration challenges. Restoration has focused not only on Lake Tahoe, but also on the entire watershed. Special attention has been given to the highly interdependent nature of terrestrial and aquatic habitats and the multifaceted socioeconomic conditions that influence the Tahoe basin ecosystem. The Lake Tahoe basin is recognized as a highly complex physical, biological, and social environment, and the challenges posed by its restoration and continued management for multiple benefits are paralleled by few other locations. Conservation and restoration of the Lake Tahoe basin ecosystem have required the sustained engagement of federal, state, and local governments, as well as the private sector. These entities have worked together to develop and implement a variety of programs and activities aimed at achieving common environmental and social goals. Yet determining how to proceed with conservation and restoration efforts in the face of limited information remains a central challenge to these efforts. Science (e.g., monitoring, research, and modeling), particularly applied science to inform adaptive management, provides a promising set of tools to address information limitations that affect our ability to select and implement effective management strategies. However, effort is required to organize and describe the science activities needed to inform adaptive management focusing on the conservation and restoration of a complex system. This document presents the results of science community efforts to organize and describe the initial elements of an integrated science plan for the Lake Tahoe basin: a conceptual framework for completing science to inform adaptive management, and focused research strategies covering topic areas of relevance to Tahoe basin management and conservation. Separate, agency-led efforts are underway to develop other essential elements of an integrated science plan including programs for status and trends and effectiveness monitoring, new data applications aimed at converting data into information and knowledge, and the integration of monitoring and applied research efforts. This science plan was developed to identify and refine science information needs for the Lake Tahoe basin. The main purpose of this effort was to develop a set of research strategies addressing key uncertainties and information gaps that challenge resource management and regulatory agencies. The research needs identified in these strategies are based on assessments of the issues and information needs that currently confront government agencies and stakeholders working in the basin. The resulting strategies are intended to guide future research efforts and to help maximize the information gained from future science investments. Three common needs drive the recommendations presented in each research strategy: Increasing our understanding of the factors and processes driving change; Developing the tools and knowledge to predict future conditions in the Lake Tahoe basin and permit comparisons among alternative futures; and Providing information for future management decisions aimed at conserving and restoring the natural and human environments of the Lake Tahoe basin.

A Safety Management System (SMS) is essentially a quality management approach to controlling risk. It provides the organizational framework to construct and support a sound safety culture that actively controls its risk exposure. With increased aviation activity and decreased resources, the SMS pushes the limits of current safety strategies and practices by developing and implementing a structured management system to control risk and meet legal responsibilities in aviation operations. Our goal is to develop a safety culture that achieves and maintains a zero accident rate. A highly successful safety culture understands that every person in the organization accepts that safety is a conscious and ongoing mindset as opposed to simply a box to be checked. We understand that safety is a dynamic non-event. Consequently, we need to maintain the capability to continuously seek out and eliminate latent defects within our systems and culture. By being proactive in this area we eliminate potential causal factors that could lead to future accidents. The purpose of this guide is to assist in fulfilling the requirements of FSM 5700 and the National Aviation Safety and Management Plan, with respect to the implementation of Safety Management Systems (SMS). This guide provides best practices for the application of SMS in the Forest Service and for its service providers. The SMS shall comprehensively examine the functions of the Forest Service and the operational environment to identify hazards and to analyze associated risks. The specific functional components include: Safety management; Organization and personnel; Training and proficiency; Flight operations; International operations (when applicable); Aircraft equipment requirements; Aircraft maintenance; Operations policies and procedures; Emergency accident/incident response; Environmental management; Occupational health and safety; and Security. This document provides guidance for SMS development applicable to all Forest Service aviation operations. Statements containing the words must, shall, and will are directive in nature and the corresponding policy can be found in the FSM 5700. This Guide contains best practices for Safety Management Systems in the aviation program, thus the terms "may" and "should" indicate the best practice or an industry standard that allows some discretion in its execution.

The USDA Forest Service completed its Strategic Plan (2000 Revision) in October 2000. The goals and objectives included in the Plan were developed with input from the public, some of which was obtained through a telephone survey. We report results of the survey. Members of the American public were asked about their values with respect to public lands, objectives for the management of public lands, beliefs about the role the agency should play in fulfilling those objectives, and attitudes about the job the agency has been doing. The public sees the promotion of ecosystem health as an important objective and role for the agency. There is strong support for protecting watersheds. The public supports multiple uses, but not all uses equally. Motorized recreation is not a high priority objective, while preserving the ability to have a ''wilderness experience" is important. There is moderate support for providing resources to dependent communities. The provision of less consumptive services is more important than those that are more consumptive. There is a lack of support for subsidies for development and leasing of public lands. Preservation of traditional uses is a somewhat important objective. Development and use of the best scientific information enjoys wide support, as does information sharing and collaboration. A national direction for the management of National Forest lands is a slightly important objective. Increasing law enforcement on National Forests and Grasslands is an important objective and an appropriate role for the agency. The public has a strong environmental protection orientation, has a moderately strong conservation/preservation orientation, and supports some development.

The U.S. Forest Service is responsible for managing over 35 million acres of designated wilderness, about 18 percent of all the land managed by the agency. Nearly all (90 percent) of the National Forests and Grasslands administer designated wilderness. Although the central mandate from the 1964 Wilderness Act is that the administering agencies preserve the wilderness character in these designated areas, the concept of wilderness character has largely been absent in Forest Service efforts to manage wilderness. The purpose of this publication is to help National Forest planners, wilderness staff, and project leaders apply in a practical way the concept of wilderness character to forest and project planning, the National Environmental Policy Act process, on-the-ground wilderness management, and wilderness character trend monitoring that is relevant to an individual wilderness.

In response to the 2002 fire season's fatal aircraft accidents, the USDA Forest Service and USDI Bureau of Land Management (BLM) jointly established an independent, five member Blue Ribbon Commission (the panel - Appendix A) to identify essential information for planning a safe and effective future aviation program. On August 15, 2002, the Chief of the Forest Service and Director of the BLM asked the panel to identify weaknesses and fail points in the current aviation program, focusing on safety, operational effectiveness, costs, sustainability, and strategic guidance. Assuming an integrated approach, the agencies tasked the panel to address these five areas as they relate to the operation and supervision of air tankers, lead planes and air supervision modules, helicopters, and air attack platforms (Appendix B). Within a 90-day period, the panel held town hall meetings in Atlanta, Portland, Salt Lake City, Denver, Albuquerque, and Sacramento, soliciting comments and ideas from those with an interest in the federal firefighting aviation program. The Federal Aviation Administration, National Transportation Safety Board, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and Canadian and United States air tanker operators, Conair and Aerounion, respectively, also provided special briefings to the panel. Verbal and written remarks were received from aerial firefighting-industry officials, air tanker contractors, aircraft manufacturers, fixed-wing and helicopter pilots, private-sector consultants, and concerned people. In addition, the panel heard commentary from representatives of state and federal agencies responsible for fighting wildland fires. The massive amount of material and brief time for analysis forced the panel to address, for the most part, only major considerations. Possibly the single largest challenge now facing leaders of these federal agencies is to foster cooperation and collaboration among working-level staffs, contractors, and states to raise the standards of aerial wildland firefighting in the United States. This report presents eight key findings, which the panel believes are critical for planning a safe and effective future firefighting aviation program. The panel relied significantly on the knowledge, experience, and judgment of its members to develop its findings, which are strong inferences rather than deduced certainties. The panel's mandate was to identify problems, not advocate solutions or make recommendations.

This state-of-knowledge review provides a synthesis of the effects of fire on cultural resources, which can be used by fire managers, cultural resource (CR) specialists, and archaeologists to more effectively manage wildland vegetation, fuels, and fire. The goal of the volume is twofold: (1) to provide cultural resource/archaeological professionals and policy makers with a primer on fuels, fire behavior, and fire effects to enable them to work more effectively with the fire management community to protect resources during fuels treatment and restoration projects and wildfire suppression activities; and (2) to provide fire and land management professionals and policy makers with a greater understanding of the value of cultural resource protection and the methods available to evaluate and mitigate risks to CR. The synthesis provides a conceptual fire effects framework for planning, managing, and modeling fire effects and a primer on fire and fuel processes and fire effects prediction modeling. A synthesis of the effects of fire on various cultural resource materials is provided for ceramics, lithics, rock art, historic-period artifacts/materials (chapter 6), and below-ground features. The importance of cultural landscapes to indigenous peoples and emphasizes the need to actively involve native people in the development of collaborative management plans is also discussed. The use and practical implications of this synthesis are the subject of the final chapter.

Wildland fire is an integral part of ecosystem management and is essential in maintaining functional ecosystems, but air pollutants emitted from those fires can be harmful to human health and welfare. Because of the public and governmental concerns about the possible risk of wildland fire smoke to public health and safety, as well as nuisance, visibility, ozone generation, and regional haze impacts, increasingly effective smoke management programs and air quality policies are being implemented with support from research and land management agency programs. This state-of-knowledge review of what is known about the effects of fire on air quality has been prepared to assist those in the fire and air quality management communities for future discussion of management, policy, and science options for managing fire and air quality. The introduction sets up a framework in which to discuss the interaction between pollutants emitted from fire, and air quality at the national, State, and local levels applied to air resource management, fire management, and geographical scale components.

Fires affect animals mainly through effects on their habitat. Fire regimes-that is, patterns of fire occurrence, size, uniformity, and severity-have been a major force shaping landscape patterns and influencing productivity throughout North America for thousands of years. Faunal communities have evolved in the context of particular fire regimes and show patterns of response to fire itself and to the changes in vegetation composition and structure that follow fire. Animals' immediate responses to fire are influenced by fire season, intensity, severity, rate of spread, uniformity, and size. Responses may include injury, mortality, immigration, or emigration. Animals with limited mobility, such as young, are more vulnerable to injury and mortality than mature animals. The habitat changes caused by fire influence faunal populations and communities much more profoundly than fire itself. Fires often cause a short-term increase in productivity, availability, or nutrient content of forage and browse. These changes can contribute to substantial increases in herbivore populations, but potential increases are moderated by animals' ability to thrive in the altered, often simplified, structure of the postfire environment. Fires generally favor raptors by reducing hiding cover and exposing prey. Small carnivores respond to fire effects on small mammal populations (either positive or negative). Large carnivores and omnivores are opportunistic species with large home ranges. Their populations change little in response to fire, but they tend to thrive in areas where their preferred prey is most plentiful-often in recent burns. In forests and woodlands, understory fires generally alter habitat structure less than mixed severity and stand-replacement fires, and their effects on animal populations are correspondingly less dramatic. Stand-replacing fires reduce habitat quality for species that require dense cover and improve it for species that prefer open sites. Many animal-fire studies depict a reorganization of animal communities in response to fire, with increases in some species accompanied by decreases in others. Like fire effects on populations, fire effects on communities are related to the amount of structural change in vegetation.

Wildland fire is a process integral to the functioning of most wildland ecosystems of the United States. Where nonnative plant species have invaded wildlands or have potential to invade, fire may influence their abundance and the effects of the nonnative species on native plant communities. This volume synthesizes scientific information regarding wildland fire and nonnative invasive plant species, identifies the nonnative invasive species currently of greatest concern in major bioregions of the United States, and describes emerging fire-invasive issues in each bioregion and throughout the nation. This report can assist fire managers and those concerned with prevention, detection, and eradication or control of nonnative invasive plants. It can help increase understanding of plant invasions and fire and can be used in planning fire management and ecosystem-based land management activities.

Fire is a natural disturbance that occurs in most terrestrial ecosystems. It is also a tool that has been used by humans to manage a wide range of natural ecosystems worldwide. As such, it can produce a spectrum of effects on soils, water, riparian biota, and wetland components of ecosystems. Fire scientists, land managers, and fire suppression personnel need to evaluate fire effects on these components, and balance the overall benefits and costs associated with the use of fire in ecosystem management. This publication has been written to provide up-to- date information on fire effects on ecosystem resources that can be used as a basis for planning and implementing fire management activities. It is a companion publication to the recently published book, Fire's Effects on Ecosystems by DeBano and others (1998). In the late 1970s, the USDA Forest Service published a series of state-of-knowledge papers about fire effects on vegetation, soils, water, wildlife, and other ecosystem resources. These papers, collectively called "The Rainbow Series" because of their covers, were widely used by forest fire personnel. This publication updates both the Tiedemann and others (1979) paper on fire's effects on water and the Wells and others (1979) paper on soils. This publication is divided into three major parts (A, B, C) and an introductory chapter that provides discussions of fire regimes, fire severity and intensity, and fire related disturbances. Part A describes the nature of the soil resource, its importance, characteristics and the responses of soils to fire and the relationship of these features to ecosystem functioning and sustainability. Part A is divided into three main chapters (2, 3, and 4) that describe specific fire effects on the physical, chemical, and biological properties of the soil, respectively. Likewise, Part B discusses the basic hydrologic processes that are affected by fire, including the hydrologic cycle, water quality, and aquatic biology. It also contains three chapters which specifically discuss the effect of fire on the hydrologic cycle, water quality, and aquatic biology in chapters 5, 6, and 7, respectively. Part C has five chapters that cover a wide range of related topics. Chapter 8 analyzes the effects of fire on the hydrology and nutrient cycling of wetland ecosystems along with management concerns. The use of models to describe heat transfer throughout the ecosystem and erosional response models to fire are discussed in chapter 9. Chapter 10 deals with important aspects of watershed rehabilitation and implementation of the Federal Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation (BAER) program. Chapter 11 directs the fire specialists and managers to important information sources including data bases, Web sites, textbooks, journals, and other sources of fire effects information. A summary of the important highlights of the book are provided in chapter 12. Last, a glossary of fire terms is included in the appendix. The material provided in each chapter has been prepared by individuals having specific expertise in a particular subject. This publication has been written as an information source text for personnel involved in fire suppression and management, planners, decisionmakers, land managers, public relations personnel, and technicians who routinely and occasionally are involved in fire suppression and using fire as a tool in ecosystem management. Because of widespread international interest in the previous and current "Rainbow Series" publications, the International System of Units (Systeme International d'Unites, SI), informally called the metric system (centimeters, cubic meters, grams), is used along with English units throughout the volume. In some instances one or the other units are used exclusively where conversions would be awkward or space does not allow presentation of both units.

This state-of-knowledge review about the effects of fire on flora and fuels can assist land managers in planning for ecosystem management and fire management, and in their efforts to inform others about the ecological role of fire. Chapter 1 presents an overview and a classification of fire regimes that is used throughout the report. Chapter 2 summarizes knowledge of fire effects on individual plants, including susceptibility to mortality of aerial crowns, stems, and roots; vegetative regeneration; seedling establishment from on-site and off-site seed sources; seasonal influences such as carbohydrates and phenological stage; and factors affecting burn severity. Five chapters describe fire regime characteristics such as fire severity, fire frequency, and fire intensity, and postfire plant community responses for ecosystems throughout the United States and Canada. Typical fuel compositions, fuel loadings, and fire behavior are described for many vegetation types. Vegetation types including Forest-Range Environmental Study (FRES), Kuchler, and Society of American Foresters (SAF) types are classified as belonging to understory, mixed, or stand replacement fire severity regime types. The severity and frequency of fire are described for the pre-Euro-American settlement period and contrasted with current fire regimes. Historic fire frequencies ranged from a fire every 1 to 3 years in some grassland and pine types to a fire every 500 to 1,000 years in some coastal forest and northern hardwood types. In many vegetation types characterized by understory fire regimes, a considerable shift in fire frequency and fire severity occurred during the past century. Successional patterns and vegetation dynamics following disturbance by fire, and in some cases related grazing and silvicultural treatments, are described for major vegetation types. Management considerations are discussed, especially for the application of prescribed fire. A chapter on global climate change describes the complexity of a changing climate and possible influences on vegetation, fuels, and fire. The uncertainty of global climate change and its interactions with vegetation means expectations for fire management are general and tentative. Nonetheless, manipulation of wildlands and disturbance regimes may be necessary to ensure continual presence of some species. The last chapter takes a broader, more fundamental view of the ecological principles and shifting fire regimes described in the other chapters. The influences of fire regimes on biodiversity and fuel accumulation are discussed. Strategies and approaches for managing fire in an ecosystem context and sources of technical knowledge that can assist in the process are described. Research needs are broadly summarized.

In 1987, the Pacific Southwest Research Station (PSW) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USFS) chartered a research work unit to examine outdoor recreation in the wildland-urban interface. The new work unit was established to address the needs of the increasingly diverse recreation visitors to national forests. The four forest supervisors in southern California observed that in the past, most recreation visitors were White. However, that percentage was changing with an increase in diverse visitors. In particular, they noted the increasing numbers of Latino visitors. They also observed that the diverse visitors were recreating in different ways compared to White visitors. The supervisors expressed concern that the needs of the diverse visitors may not be being met because the sites were often developed with White visitors in mind, and thought it was beneficial for PSW to provide scientific information about the diverse outdoor recreation visitors who were using USFS lands for outdoor recreation. The research work unit has emphasized applied research in response. We report 16 studies grouped into six major topical headings: international studies, syntheses of studies, management studies, environmental belief studies, communication studies, and measurement studies.

The purpose of this Change Management and Implementation Guide is to provide the US Forest Service's Fire and Aviation Management with pertinent information to help build a strategy when faced with an operational change. This includes change to the agency, a particular program or any other change that has potential to significantly impact personnel or operations whether originating from inside or outside the agency. As directed from the Chief's Safety Policy, "The prevention of accidents can only occur if we commit to safe work practices, continually assess our changing environment, refuse to assume unacceptable risks, and continually address unsafe conditions". Change often introduces hazards that are unknown or unforeseen due to the fact that something different has been introduced into a known and familiar method. In an attempt to proactively expose these hazards, a processed approach to introducing Change and managing people and systems through the transition period is a critical strategy for success. This plan is dynamic and should be utilized to best meet the scope and scale of each change process. It should also be updated as better practices are identified. Knowledge gained through implementation as well as reviews during continuous improvement processes must contribute to additional versions of this plan. Revision control should be annotated on the Revision Control log within the US Forest Service Safety Management System Guide.

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Covers all aspects of managing a native plant nursery.