Case Studies
Authored By: A. L. Tomcho
The case studies here are still being edited and are not formally released.
Subsections found in Case Studies
- Spread of Invasive Plants from Roads to River Systems in Alaska: A Network Model : Alaska has relatively few invasive plants, and most of them are found only along the State's limited road system.
- Analyzing Risks to Protected Areas Using the Human Modification Framework: A Colorado Case Study : A framework that organizes natural and protected areas is often used to help understand the potential risks to natural areas and aspects of their ecological and human dimensions.
- Evaluating Wildland Fire Danger and Prioritizing Vegetation and Fuels Treatments : A prototype decision support system is presented for evaluating wildland fire danger and prioritizing subwatersheds for vegetation and fuels treatment.
- Modeling Species' Realized Climatic Niche Space and Predicting their Response to Global Warming for Several Western Forest Species with Small Geographic Distributions : The Random Forests multiple regression tree was used to develop an empirically based bioclimatic model of the presence-absence of species occupying small geographic distributions in Western North America.
- Evaluating the Vulnerability of Maine Forests to Wind Damage : Numerous factors, some of which cannot be controlled, are continually interacting with the forest resource, introducing risk to management, and making consistent predictable management outcomes uncertain. Included in these factors are threats or hazards such as windstorms and wildfire.
- Information Needs, Acceptability of Risk, Trust, and Reliance: The Case of National Predictive Services Customers : Making complex risk-related decisions involves a degree of uncertainty.
- Shared Values and Trust: The Experience of Community Residents in a Fire-Prone Ecosystem : The risk and impact of fires have been significant on the San Bernardino National Forest.
- Probabilistic Risk Models for Multiple Disturbances: An Example of Forest Insects and Wildfires : Building probabilistic risk models for highly random forest disturbances like wildfire and forest insect outbreaks is a challenging problem.
- Integration of Population Genetic Structure and Plant Response to Climate Change: Sustaining Genetic Resources Through Evaluation of Projected Threats : To assess threats or predict responses to disturbances, or both, it is essential to recognize and characterize the population structures of forest species in relation to changing environments.
- Assessment of Habitat Threats to Shrublands in the Great Basin : The sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystem is one of the most imperiled in the United States.
- Establishing a Nationwide Baseline of Historical Burn Severity Data to Support Monitoring of Trends in Wildfire Effects and National Fire Policies : There is a need to provide agency leaders, elected officials, and the general public with summary information regarding the effects of large wildfires.
- Threats to Private Forest Lands in the U.S.A.: A Forests on the Edge Study : The Forests on the Edge project, sponsored by the USDA Forest Service, uses geographic information systems to construct and analyze maps depicting threats to the contributions of America's private forest lands.
- A Spatial Model for Predicting Effects of Climate Change on Swiss Needle Cast Disease Severity in Pacific Northwest Forests : Swiss needle cast disease of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) is caused by the ascomycete fungus Phaeocryptopus gaeumannii.
- Assessment of Oak Wilt Threat to Habitat of the Golden-Cheeked Warbler, an Endangered Species, in Central Texas : A major epidemic of oak wilt, caused by Ceratocystis fagacearum (Bretz) Hunt, has been killing trees in Central Texas for at least 40 years.
- Managing Wildland Fire Risk in Florida : Florida's Wildland Fire Risk Assessment (FRA), which was completed in 2002, is a statewide effort to develop a comprehensive suite of standardized, spatial data layers developed to support implementation of a statewide fuels management strategy.
- Utilizing Remotely Sensed Data & Elementary Analytical Techniques in Post-Katrina Mississippi to Examine Storm Damage Modeling : Hurricane Katrina's passage through south Mississippi on August 29, 2005, which damaged or destroyed thousands of hectares of forestland, was followed by massive salvage, cleanup, and assessment efforts.
- An Aquatic Multi-Scale Assessment and Planning Framework Approach--Forest Plan Revision Case Study : The Aquatic Multi-Scale Assessment and Planning Framework is a web-based decision support tool developed to assist aquatic practitioners in managing fisheries and watershed information.
- A Landscape Scale Remote Sensing/GIS Tool to Assess Eastern Hemlock Vulnerability to Hemlock Woolly Adelgid Induced Decline : The hemlock woolly adelgid (Adelges tsugae Annand) (HWA) is an invasive insect pest that is causing widespread mortality of eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis).
- Modeling Potential Movements of the Emerald Ash Borer: the Model Framework : The emerald ash borer (EAB, Agrilus planipennis) is threatening to decimate native ashes (Fraxinus sp.) across North America and, so far, has devastated ash populations across sections of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, and Ontario.
- Assessing Insect-Induced Tree Mortality across Large Areas with High-Resolution Aerial Photography in a Multistage Sample : In recent years, unprecedented tree mortality has occurred throughout the national forests due to insect infestations and disease outbreaks.
- Evaluating the Impact of Invasive Species in Forest Landscapes: the Southern Pine Beetle and the Hemlock Woolly Adelgid : The southern pine beetle, Dendroctonus frontalis (Zimmerman) (Coleoptera: Curculionidae: Scolytinae) (SPB) is an indigenous invasive species that infests and causes mortality to pines (Pinus spp.) throughout the Southern United States.
- Using Historical Photography to Monitor and Assess Threats over Time : Analysis of aerial photography is perhaps the best way to assess changes in landcover conditions.
- A Methodology for Assessing Annual Risk of Southern Pine Beetle Outbreaks across the Southern Region Using Pheromone Traps : An operational system to forecast infestation trends (increasing, static, declining) and relative population levels (high, moderate, low) of the southern pine beetle (SPB), Dendroctonus frontalis, has been implemented in the Southern and Eastern United States.
- Digital Aerial Sketchmapping and Downlink Communications: A New Tool for Fire Managers : Aerial sketchmapping is the geolocating of features that are seen on the ground below an aircraft and the subsequent recording of those features.
- Integrating Natural Disturbances and Management Activities to Examine Risks and Opportunities in the Central Oregon Landscape Analysis : We used state and transition models to integrate natural disturbances and management activities for a 275,000-ha landscape in the central Oregon Cascades. The landscape consists of a diverse mix of land ownerships, land use allocations, and environments.
- Modeling Current Climate Conditions for Forest Pest Risk Assessment : Forest pest risk assessments detail the nature and severity of threats posed to particular forest species and ecosystems by insects, pathogens, or other organisms.
- A Multicriteria Framework for Producing Local, Regional, and National Insect and Disease Risk Maps : Ensuring the health of America’s forests requires the analysis, understanding, and management of complex and interrelated natural resources.
- Uncertainty Estimation for Map-Based Analyses : Traditionally, natural resource managers have asked the question, “How much?” and have received sample-based estimates of resource totals or means. Increasingly, however, the same managers are now asking the additional question, “Where?” and are expecting spatially explicit answers in the form of maps.
- Assessing Risks to Multiple Resources Affected by Wildfire and Forest Management Using an Integrated Probabilistic Framework : The tradeoffs that surround forest management are inherently complex, often involving multiple temporal and spatial scales.
- Moderate Resolution Data and Gradient Nearest Neighbor Imputation for Regional-National Risk Assessment : This study was designed to test the feasibility of combining a method designed to populate pixels with inventory plot data at the 30-m scale with a new national predictor dataset.
- Risk Analysis and Guidelines for Harvest Activities in Wisconsin Oak Timberlands to Minimize Oak Wilt Threat : Oaks (Quercus spp.) are an important species group in the forests of Wisconsin.
- Previsual Detection of Two Conifer-Infesting Adelgid Species in North American Forests : The balsam woolly adelgid, Adelges piceae, and hemlock woolly adelgid, Adelges tsugae (Homoptera: Adelgidae), are invasive pests of coniferous forests in both the Eastern and Western United States.
- Estimating the Susceptibility to Phytophthora alni Globally Using Both Statistical Analyses and Expert Knowledge : Phytophthora alni is a recently hybridized soil and waterborne pathogen causing root and collar rot of species of the genus Alnus (alder).
- Air Pollution Increases Forest Susceptibility to Wildfires: a Case Study for the San Bernardino Mountains in Southern California : Many factors increase susceptibility of forests to wildfire.
Encyclopedia ID: p3389
