Effects of ownership patterns on cross-boundary wildfires.

Understanding ownership effects on large wildfires is a precursor to the development of risk governance strategies that better protect people and property and restore fire-adapted ecosystems. We analyzed wildfire events in the Pacific Northwest from 1984 to 2018 to explore how area burned responded to ownership, asking whether particular ownerships burned disproportionately more or less, and whether these patterns varied by forest and grass/shrub vegetation types. While many individual fires showed indifference to property lines, taken as a whole, we found patterns of disproportionate burning for both forest and grass/shrub fires.

Impacts of the Northwest Forest Plan on forest composition and bird populations.

The Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) initiated one of the most sweeping changes to forest management in the world, affecting 10 million hectares of federal land. The NWFP is a science-based plan incorporating monitoring and adaptive management and provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the influence of policy. We used >25 years of region-wide bird surveys, forest data, and land-ownership maps to test this policy's effect on biodiversity.

Fire deficits have increased drought sensitivity in dry conifer forests: Fire frequency and tree-ring carbon isotope evidence from Central Oregon.

A century of fire suppression across the Western United States has led to more crowded forests and increased competition for resources. Studies of forest thinning or stand conditions after mortality events have provided indirect evidence for how competition can promote drought stress and predispose forests to severe fire and/or bark beetle outbreaks. Here, we demonstrate linkages between fire deficits and increasing drought stress through analyses of annually resolved tree-ring growth, fire scars, and carbon isotope discrimination (Δ C) across a dry mixed-conifer forest landscape.

Packing characteristics of winged shaped polymer fiber supports for preparative chromatography.

Polymer fibers have been identified as a promising alternative support material for liquid chromatography. Area enhanced fibers may overcome the shortcomings of conventional fiber supports with respect to binding capacity and packing efficiency. One type of area enhanced fiber supports are winged shaped microfibers, which have a more than tenfold higher surface area than round fibers, and can be manufactured via inexpensive, conventional extrusion techniques.