Spies, T. A., E. M. White, J. D. Kline, A. P. Fischer, A. Ager, J. Bailey, J. Bolte, J. Koch, E. Platt, C. S. Olsen, D. Jacobs, B. Shindler, M. M. Steen-Adams, and R. Hammer. 2014. Examining fire-prone forest landscapes as coupled human and natural systems. Ecology and Society 19(3): 9.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-06584-190309

Spies, T. A., E. White, A. Ager, J. D. Kline, J. P. Bolte, E. K. Platt, K. A. Olsen, R. J. Pabst, A. M.G. Barros, J. D. Bailey, S. Charnley, J. Koch, M. M. Steen-Adams, P. H. Singleton, J. Sulzman, C. Schwartz, and B. Csuti. 2017. Using an agent-based model to examine forest management outcomes in a fire-prone landscape in Oregon, USA. Ecology and Society 22(1):25. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-08841-220125

The implementation of US federal forest restoration programs on national forests is a complex process that requires balancing diverse socioecological goals with project economics. Despite both the large geographic scope and substantial investments in restoration projects, a quantitative decision support framework to locate optimal project areas and examine tradeoffs among alternative restoration strategies is lacking. We developed and demonstrated a new prioritization approach for restoration projects using optimization and the framework of production possibility frontiers. The study area was a 914,657 ha national forest in eastern Oregon, US that was identified as a national priority for restoration with the goal of increasing fire resiliency and sustaining ecosystem services. The results illustrated sharp tradeoffs among the various restoration goals due to weak spatial correlation of forest stressors and provisional ecosystem services. The sharpest tradeoffs were found in simulated projects that addressed either wildfire risk to the urban interface or wildfire hazard, highlighting the challenges associated with meeting both economic and fire protection goals. Understanding the nature of tradeoffs between restoration objectives and communicating them to forest stakeholders will allow forest managers to more effectively design and implement economically feasible restoration projects.

We tested the hypothesis that sapling growth following a sudden increase in solar irradiance is related to recovery from photoinhibition and the balance between rate of production of new leaves and rate of abscision of old leaves. Leaf gas exchange, chlorophyll fluorescence and relative growth rate (RGR) of stem basal area were measured following the sudden exposure of shade-grown (7% of full sunlight) saplings of four Shorea species to full sunlight. Sudden exposure to full sunlight resulted in an immediate and substantial reduction in dark-adapted quantum yield of photosystem II (F_v/F_m), followed by a gradual recovery in all species. Near light-saturated net assimilation rate (A_max) and area-based leaf chlorophyll concentration ([Chl_area]) also declined immediately after exposure. Eleven days after exposure, A_max had recovered to pre-exposure values in all species, whereas [Chl_area] had not recovered. Across species, RGR of stem basal area increased with increasing RGR of the number of leaves following exposure to full sunlight. The interspecific variations in RGR of stem basal area suggest that new leaf production is crucial for determining the potential growth of saplings following gap formation.

Kline, J. D., E. M. White, A. Paige Fischer, M. M. Steen-Adams, S. Charnley, C. S. Olsen, T. A. Spies, and J. D. Bailey. 2017. Integrating social science into empirical models of coupled human and natural systems. Ecology and Society 22(3):25. https://doi.org/10.5751/ES-09329-220325