Application of Erosion Prediction Models by a User Agency on Private Lands in the United States

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
G.A. Weesies ◽  
G.L. Tibke ◽  
D.L. Schertz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Prediction Models ◽  
The United States ◽  
Private Lands ◽  
Erosion Prediction

scholarly journals Regulation and Practice of Forest-Management Fires on Private Lands in the Southeast United States: Legal Open Burns versus Certified Prescribed Burns

2020 ◽  
Vol 118 (4) ◽  
pp. 385-402
Author(s):  
Xue Han ◽  
Gregory E Frey ◽  
Changyou Sun
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Forest Management ◽  
Standard Of Care ◽  
Past Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Private Lands ◽  
Prescribed Burns ◽  
Southeast United States

Abstract Abstract Forest-management burns have been widely acknowledged as a useful land-management tool in the United States. Nevertheless, fire is inherently risky and may lead to severe damages or create smoke that affects public health. Past research has not explored the difference in policy and practice between open burns, which meet minimum legal criteria, and certified prescribed burns, which follow a higher standard of care. This study seeks to understand the distinction between legal open burns and certified prescribed burns, and, furthermore, to identify trends by type of burn in the Southeast United States. To that end, we compared statutes, regulations, incentives, and notifications of fire as a forest-management tool among nine states in the US Southeast. We found no steady time trends in number or area of burns among the states for the past decade. A nontrivial proportion of legal open burns, which tend to be smaller burns, are noncertified burns, meaning they meet minimum legal requirements, but not the higher standard required for certified prescribed burns.

scholarly journals Contemporary Fire Regimes Provide a Critical Perspective on Restoration Needs in the Mexico-United States Borderlands

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 117862212096919
Author(s):  
Miguel L Villarreal ◽  
José M Iniguez ◽  
Aaron D Flesch ◽  
Jamie S Sanderlin ◽  
Citlali Cortés Montaño ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Relevant Literature ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fire Frequency ◽  
Management Tool ◽  
Vegetation Types ◽  
Private Lands ◽  
United States Mexico

The relationship between people and wildfire has always been paradoxical: fire is an essential ecological process and management tool, but can also be detrimental to life and property. Consequently, fire regimes have been modified throughout history through both intentional burning to promote benefits and active suppression to reduce risks. Reintroducing fire and its benefits back into the Sky Island mountains of the United States-Mexico borderlands has the potential to reduce adverse effects of altered fire regimes and build resilient ecosystems and human communities. To help guide regional fire restoration, we describe the frequency and severity of recent fires over a 32-year period (1985-2017) across a vast binational region in the United States-Mexico borderlands and assess variation in fire frequency and severity across climate gradients and in relation to vegetation and land tenure classes. We synthesize relevant literature on historical fire regimes within 9 major vegetation types and assess how observed contemporary fire characteristics vary from expectations based on historical patterns. Less than 28% of the study area burned during the observation period, excluding vegetation types in warmer climates that are not adapted to fire (eg, Desertscrub and Thornscrub). Average severity of recent fires was low despite some extreme outliers in cooler, wetter environments. Midway along regional temperature and precipitation gradients, approximately 64% of Pine-Oak Forests burned at least once, with fire frequencies that mainly corresponded to historical expectations on private lands in Mexico but less so on communal lands, suggesting the influence of land management. Fire frequency was higher than historical expectations in extremely cool and wet environments that support forest types such as Spruce-Fir, indicating threats to these systems possibly attributable to drought and other factors. In contrast, fires were absent or infrequent across large areas of Woodlands (~73% unburned) and Grasslands (~88% unburned) due possibly to overgrazing, which reduces abundance and continuity of fine fuels needed to carry fire. Our findings provide a new depiction of fire regimes in the Sky Islands that can help inform fire management, restoration, and regional conservation planning, fostered by local and traditional knowledge and collaboration among landowners and managers.

A state assessment of private lands wildlife conservation in the United States

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 328-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Morgan ◽  
Cody M. Rhoden ◽  
Bill White ◽  
Steven P. Riley
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Wildlife Conservation ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Assessment ◽  
Private Lands

scholarly journals Forecasting type-specific seasonal influenza after 26 weeks in the United States using influenza activities in other countries

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. B. Choi ◽  
J. Kim ◽  
I. Ahn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Time Series ◽  
Deep Learning ◽  
Seasonal Influenza ◽  
Prediction Models ◽  
Time Lag ◽  
The United States ◽  
Surveillance Data ◽  
Influenza Surveillance ◽  
The U.S

AbstractTo identify countries that have seasonal patterns similar to the time series of influenza surveillance data in the United States and other countries, and to forecast the 2018–2019 seasonal influenza outbreak in the U.S. using linear regression, auto regressive integrated moving average, and deep learning. We collected the surveillance data of 164 countries from 2010 to 2018 using the FluNet database. Data for influenza-like illness (ILI) in the U.S. were collected from the Fluview database. This cross-correlation study identified the time lag between the two time-series. Deep learning was performed to forecast ILI, total influenza, A, and B viruses after 26 weeks in the U.S. The seasonal influenza patterns in Australia and Chile showed a high correlation with those of the U.S. 22 weeks and 28 weeks earlier, respectively. The R2 score of DNN models for ILI for validation set in 2015–2019 was 0.722 despite how hard it is to forecast 26 weeks ahead. Our prediction models forecast that the ILI for the U.S. in 2018–2019 may be later and less severe than those in 2017–2018, judging from the influenza activity for Australia and Chile in 2018. It allows to estimate peak timing, peak intensity, and type-specific influenza activities for next season at 40th week. The correlation for seasonal influenza among Australia, Chile, and the U.S. could be used to decide on influenza vaccine strategy six months ahead in the U.S.

scholarly journals High-resolution land value maps reveal underestimation of conservation costs in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 117 (47) ◽  
pp. 29577-29583
Author(s):  
Christoph Nolte
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
High Resolution ◽  
The United States ◽  
Conservation Policy ◽  
Private Benefits ◽  
Private Lands ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Land Protection ◽  
Conservation Costs ◽  
Fair Market Value

The justification and targeting of conservation policy rests on reliable measures of public and private benefits from competing land uses. Advances in Earth system observation and modeling permit the mapping of public ecosystem services at unprecedented scales and resolutions, prompting new proposals for land protection policies and priorities. Data on private benefits from land use are not available at similar scales and resolutions, resulting in a data mismatch with unknown consequences. Here I show that private benefits from land can be quantified at large scales and high resolutions, and that doing so can have important implications for conservation policy models. I developed high-resolution estimates of fair market value of private lands in the contiguous United States by training tree-based ensemble models on 6 million land sales. The resulting estimates predict conservation cost with up to 8.5 times greater accuracy than earlier proxies. Studies using coarser cost proxies underestimate conservation costs, especially at the expensive tail of the distribution. This has led to underestimations of policy budgets by factors of up to 37.5 in recent work. More accurate cost accounting will help policy makers acknowledge the full magnitude of contemporary conservation challenges and can help improve the targeting of public ecosystem service investments.

Free-ranging horse management in Australia, New Zealand and the United States: socio-ecological dimensions of a protracted environmental conflict

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 27
Author(s):  
J. D. Scasta ◽  
M. Adams ◽  
R. Gibbs ◽  
B. Fleury
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Land Surface ◽  
Ecological Impact ◽  
Fertility Control ◽  
The United States ◽  
Private Lands ◽  
The Us ◽  
Free Ranging

Management of free-ranging horses (Equus ferus caballus) is a complex socio-ecological issue in Australia (AU), New Zealand (NZ), and the United States (US). In these countries, horses are the results of colonial introductions and occupy very harsh rangeland environments exerting a grazing disturbance that has generated ecological concerns. Although many social and ecological concerns are similar, each country also has nuances. In 2018, we conducted a field-based comparison of AU, NZ, and US using an inductive approach to identify similarities, differences, and emerging themes through conversations with >100 individuals from New South Wales Australia, the North Island of New Zealand, and the western US. Additional data sources included field observations and archival documents. Consistent emergent themes identified included: strong public emotion, politicization of management, population growth concerns, negative ecological impact concerns, agreement that horses should be treated humanely, disagreement as to what practices were the most humane, interest and scepticism about fertility control, the need for transparency, compromise to accommodating horses and acknowledgement of social values, and recognition that collaboration is the only means to achieve both healthy rangelands and healthy horses. Unique themes identified included: NZ empowering advocate groups to become part of the solution, conflict between horses and livestock is a mostly US conflict, equids originated in the US, concern about the sustainability of adoption programs, different expectations/options for management on private lands, cultural history such as brumby running in AU, permanent branding of horses in the US, litigation as a uniquely US strategy (although a judgement on recent AU litigation is pending), government data accepted to guide removals in NZ but not always in AU or US, and complex heterogeneous land surface ownership patterns makes management difficult in the US. The difficulty of horse management in these countries is attributed to social intricacies rather than biological/ecological gaps of knowledge.

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