A midterm report on the state of the Dry Forest Zone and its communities

2 pagesThe Dry Forest Zone (DFZ) project is a five-year collaborative effort to foster an integrated approach to forest stewardship and economic development in eastern Oregon and northern California. The DFZ project invests in capacities for community-based natural resource management at multiple scales, creating enabling conditions for transformative change. We conducted a mid-term assessment to document the impacts of the DFZ project to date.This briefing paper was made possible with funding from the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities, USDA Rural Development

Developing socioeconomic performance measures for the Watershed Condition Framework

24 pagesAcross multiple presidential administrations, forest and watershed restoration has become an increasingly important focus of the USDA Forest Service. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, for example, has made restoring watershed and forest health the primary objective of the Forest Service. In FY 2012, Congress initiated an integrated resource restoration (IRR) pilot project to align the Forest Service budget with integrated restoration priorities on a trial basis. To foster watershed restoration, in 2010 the Forest Service introduced the Watershed Condition Framework (WCF) program, a comprehensive approach to planning and implementing integrated projects in priority watersheds. This framework promises to help national forests assess watershed health, prioritize restoration and maintenance activities, and measure their progress towards restoration. Using the WCF, the Forest Service should be able to increase the effectiveness of restoration by being more strategic about where and how it works. The WCF’s focus on outcomes should also help demonstrate the costs and benefits of investments in restoration.This study was made possible with funding from the USDA Forest Service (FS #11-CR-11061800-008)

The benefits of USDA Forest Service agreements with community-based organizations

2 pagesThe federal government is the largest landowner in many western communities. It can contribute to local socioeconomic vitality by providing opportunities for businesses and partners to perform land management activities and process natural resources. However, little is known about how the Forest Service engages nonprofit partners to accomplish this work and produce community benefits. We examined how formal agreements between the Forest Service and community based-organizations under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) in 2009-2010 created social and livelihood benefits. We found that different kinds of agreement structures can make these benefits possible.This briefing paper was made possible with funding from the US Endowment for Forestry and Communities, USDA Rural Development, and the USDA Forest Service

A profile of federal timber purchases in the U.S. West

2 pagesThe US Forest Service primarily engages the private sector through service contracts, stewardship contracts, and timber sales. Both stewardship project and timber sales can generate commercially valuable wood products, and some businesses may rely on these federal timber sources. However, little is known about the timber-purchasing businesses currently active on federal lands. To gain a better understanding of these businesses, we investigated their characteristics, business needs, challenges, and reliance on federal timber sales.This research was supported by funding from the USDA Agricultural and Food Research Initiative, grant #2011-67023-30111

The social and livelihood benefits of USDA Forest Service agreements with community-based organizations

12 pagesThe federal government is the largest landowner in many western communities. It contributes to local socioeconomic vitality by providing opportunities for businesses and partners to perform land management activities and process natural resources. How federal agencies produce these benefits depends on the type of mechanism (e.g., timber sales, service contracts, or stewardship contracts and agreements) used to sell goods or procure services. To perform land management work on the ground, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service or U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management typically goes “to the market” by soliciting service contracts or offering timber sales in the private sector. The agency also chooses how to structure the opportunity—for example, setting an amount of timber to be sold or acres to be treated—and selects a business to purchase goods or perform work. In turn, how this business conducts work further determines community benefits such as the number of jobs created or retained and the wages paid.This project was made possible by funding from the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities and USDA Rural Development

Socioeconomic Impacts of Recovery act Investments on the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest

2 p.Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to create immediate job opportunities and stimulate long-term economic growth. The United States Forest Service received approximately $1.15 billion to promote economic recovery through hazardous fuels reduction, biomass utilization development, and infrastructure projects. When ARRA was passed, there was considerable political conversation about whether investments in the ecological infrastructure of public lands could create both short-term jobs and long-term economic development. The purpose of this study was to understand how Forest Service ARRA investments may have impacted local job creation and economic opportunities.This report was made possible by funding from the US Forest Service Pacific Northwest Research Station

Boots on the ground, boots around the table : managing rangeland wildfire risk in Oregon and Idaho

2 pagesThe rangelands of southeastern Oregon and southern Idaho have experienced increasingly large wildfires that threaten multiple values and can exceed Bureau of Land Management (BLM) response capacity. There has been interest in expanding suppression capabilities through the creation of rangeland fire protection associations (RFPAs), volunteer groups of landowners trained and authorized to respond to wildfires. Another key strategy has been the collaborative development of proactive mitigation measures to reduce the risk of large wildfires. This fact sheet examines how the multiple entities involved in rangeland wildfire mitigation and suppression are coordinating their actions and addressing shared risks through case studies of Harney County, Oregon and Owyhee County, Idaho.FUNDER: Joint Fire Science Program

TreeToReads - a pipeline for simulating raw reads from phylogenies.

BackgroundUsing phylogenomic analysis tools for tracking pathogens has become standard practice in academia, public health agencies, and large industries. Using the same raw read genomic data as input, there are several different approaches being used to infer phylogenetic tree. These include many different SNP pipelines, wgMLST approaches, k-mer algorithms, whole genome alignment and others; each of these has advantages and disadvantages, some have been extensively validated, some are faster, some have higher resolution. A few of these analysis approaches are well-integrated into the regulatory process of US Federal agencies (e.g. the FDA's SNP pipeline for tracking foodborne pathogens). However, despite extensive validation on benchmark datasets and comparison with other pipelines, we lack methods for fully exploring the effects of multiple parameter values in each pipeline that can potentially have an effect on whether the correct phylogenetic tree is recovered.ResultsTo resolve this problem, we offer a program, TreeToReads, which can generate raw read data from mutated genomes simulated under a known phylogeny. This simulation pipeline allows direct comparisons of simulated and observed data in a controlled environment. At each step of these simulations, researchers can vary parameters of interest (e.g., input tree topology, amount of sequence divergence, rate of indels, read coverage, distance of reference genome, etc) to assess the effects of various parameter values on correctly calling SNPs and reconstructing an accurate tree.ConclusionsSuch critical assessments of the accuracy and robustness of analytical pipelines are essential to progress in both research and applied settings

Quick guide to monitoring economic impacts of ecosystem restoration and stewardship

16 pagesThis guide will help you develop an economic monitoring program by setting goals, selecting monitoring measures, collecting data, and reporting and using monitoring results. Specifically, it describes how to obtain and utilize detailed information about job numbers, job quality, wages, contracting and subcontracting opportunities, and other related economic impacts of restoration.This quick guide was made possible with funding from the Meyer Fund for a Sustainable Environment

A profile of community-based organizations in the U.S. West

2 pagesCommunity-based organizations (CBOs) are non-profit organizations based in rural communities that work on both local economic development and natural resource stewardship. CBOs were established in many places across the U.S. West to help struggling rural communities build sustainable natural resource-based economies. They often serve communities that were greatly affected by changes to public land policy and changes in the timber industry or other natural resource industries since the late 1980s. These communities have typically experienced social conflict, unemployment, and other challenges related to environmental management. In 2016 we conducted a survey of CBOs across the West to better understand their organizational characteristics and activities.This research was supported by funding from the USDA Agricultural and Food Research Initiative, grant #2011-67023- 30111