Colin Dillingham

United States Department of Agriculture | USDA · Plumas National Forest

Species with extensive geographical ranges pose special challenges to assessing drivers of wildlife disease, necessitating collaborative and large-scale analyses. The imperilled foothill yellow-legged frog (Rana boylii) inhabits a wide geographical range and variable conditions in rivers of California and Oregon (USA), and is considered threatened...

Background In California’s mixed-conifer forests, fuel reduction treatments can successfully reduce fire severity, bolster forest resilience, and make lasting changes in forest structure. However, current understanding of the duration of treatment effectiveness is lacking robust empirical evidence. We leveraged data collected from 20-year-old fores...

Genetic tools that identify species from trace DNA samples could supplement traditional survey methods to clarify distributional limits of rare species. For species with legal habitat protection, elevational limits of distributions are used to determine where management actions may affect endangered species. The endangered Sierra Nevada yellow‐legg...

Reintroductions are an important recovery tool for endangered species but have had varying success. We used demographic data to evaluate the use of reintroductions for the recovery of the federally endangered Sierra Nevada Yellow-legged Frog (Rana sierrae) in stream populations in its northern range where the species is particularly at risk. We con...

Increasing frequency and severity of wildfire may jeopardize persistence of large tracts of late seral forest, raising concerns over population viability of forest-dependent species like the Northern Goshawk (Accipiter gentilis). We tracked 20 adult Northern Goshawks with GPS loggers over 4 years to investigate roosting (nocturnal) and foraging (di...

1. Wildfires are increasing in incidence and severity across the western US, leading to changes in forest structure and wildlife habitats. Knowledge of how species respond to fire-driven habitat changes in these landscapes is limited and generally disconnected from our understanding of adaptations that underpin responses to fire. 2. We aimed to inv...

245 described species, two undescribed species and four varieties of moss are documented on the Plumas National Forest, California representing approximately 35% of the California moss flora. Nineteen species are new records for the Sierra Nevada mountain range of California. The high rainfall on the western slope of the forest and associated habit...

We built on previous work by performing a more in-depth examination of a completed landscape fuel treatment network. Our specific objectives were: (1) model hazardous fire potential with and without the treatment network, (2) project hazardous fire potential over several decades to assess fuel treatment network longevity, and (3) assess fuel treatm...

The Herger-Feinstein Quincy Library Group Forest Recovery Act of 1999was in the vanguard of large national forest management projects in the Sierra Nevada aimed at protecting forests from wildfire. Detailed monitoring was done because of the newness and large spatial extent of the management treatments which included thinning small- and medium-diam...

Evaluate how well hazard fuel reduction and vegetation management activities interacted with wildfires on the Plumas, Lassen and Tahoe National Forests between 1999 and 2010.

Silvicultural practices such as thinning are performed both for commodity production and to help achieve fuel reduction and biodiversity goals. Although there are several studies that have examined effects of clearcut harvest techniques on forest songbirds, few have examined the effects of thinning. We studied the response of songbirds to different...

Artificial bat roosting houses are often used in managed forests of southwestern Oregon. The goal of this study was to find the orientation and exposure of bat houses that maximizes bat occupancy rates. Occupancy rates were highest in bat boxes with southern and eastern aspects (11.6% and 9.7%, respectively). Significant differences in occupancy we...

We summarized data from 2,479 intensive 2-hr morning surveys and 950 general surveys (< 2 hr duration) between 1988 and 1994 to determine the distribution of marbled murrelets (Brachyramphus marmoratus) in mature and old-growth forest stands on the Siskiyou National Forest of southwestern Oregon. Marbled murrelets were detected on 449 of these surv...