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Full-Text Articles in Forest Sciences
Lidar-Landsat Covariance For Predicting Canopy Fuels, Margaret D. Epstein
Lidar-Landsat Covariance For Predicting Canopy Fuels, Margaret D. Epstein
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Managing wildfires in the western United States is becoming increasingly complex. Visualizing and quantifying canopy structures allows fire managers to both plan for fire and track recovery. Light detecting and ranging, or LiDAR can measure forests in three dimensions, but has limited spatial and temporal coverage. LiDAR-Landsat covariance uses machine learning to fill in the spatial and temporal gaps of LiDAR coverage with supplemental Landsat imagery. However, in order to capture real forest dynamics, a model needs to be stable enough to detect long term trends, sensitive to episodic disturbance, and general enough to work on multiple landcovers. The purpose …
Sula Study Revisited: 20-Year Post-Fire Regeneration In The Southern Bitterroot Valley, Montana., Luke Alan Rymniak
Sula Study Revisited: 20-Year Post-Fire Regeneration In The Southern Bitterroot Valley, Montana., Luke Alan Rymniak
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
In the summer of 2000, a number of large fires burned in the southern Bitterroot Valley near Sula, Montana. Research was conducted in 2001 and 2003 in the fire-affected areas of the French Basin and Larid Creek areas in order to investigate the effects of environmental variables, fire severity, and post-fire management on vegetation regeneration. In 2020 these areas were remeasured to understand trends over time by evaluating the impact of these same factors 20 years post fire. The results showed that the effects of environmental variables, fire severity, and post-fire management on vegetation regeneration were varied. The most influential …
Remote Sensing Approaches To Predict Forest Characteristics In Northwest Montana, Ryan P. Rock
Remote Sensing Approaches To Predict Forest Characteristics In Northwest Montana, Ryan P. Rock
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Remote sensing can be utilized by land management organizations to save money and time. Mapping vegetation using either aerial photographs or satellite imagery and the applications for forest management are of particular interest to the Montana Department of Natural Resources. In 2018, the organization began a pilot program to test the incorporation of raster analysis of remotely sensed data into their inventory program and had limited success. This analysis identified two areas of improvement: the selection method of inventory plots and the imagery used for classification and metrics. This study found that selecting inventory plots using a generalized random tessellation …
Harvesting Forest Biomass In The Us Southern Rocky Mountains, Lucas Patrick Townsend
Harvesting Forest Biomass In The Us Southern Rocky Mountains, Lucas Patrick Townsend
Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers
Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and other mixed conifer forests of the United States southern Rocky Mountains (SRM) evolved under a low-severity, high-frequency fire regime. With the arrival of Euro-American colonists, fire was excluded from most forests, causing stands to grow dense and become prone to uncharacteristic high-severity crown fires. To combat wildfire threat, restoration treatments are frequently used to restore historic stand structure and function, effectively reducing high-severity fire risk. However, these treatments may be costly and little information is available regarding the forest operations used in the SRM. In this thesis, five forest operations were studied in 2017 to …