<p> Remotely sensed MODIS fire detections were used to examine wildfire variability from 2003-2011 in southeast Louisiana, and to determine if the Deepwater Horizon oil spill and hurricanes may have impacted fire frequency and intensity. Despite low wildfire detection rates, around 60% for fires at least 1 km² or greater, the MODIS fire product provided a consistent and reliable source of wildfire data. As a result of Hurricane Katrina, wildfire detection frequencies doubled their average numbers during the fall of 2005 in inland areas and during the spring of 2006 in inland and coastal marsh areas. Strangely enough, the oil spill may have contributed to lower fire frequencies in the summer of 2010 and spring of 2011 inland. Neither hurricane Katrina nor the oil spill were found to have an effect on fire intensity, and the spatial distribution of wildfires remained relatively constant over the study area after both disasters. </p>

<p> Mapping forest resources is useful for identifying threat patterns and monitoring changes associated with landscapes. Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Science techniques are effective tools used to identify and forecast forest resource threats such as exotic plant invasion, vulnerability to climate change, and land-use/cover change. This research focused on mapping abundance and distribution of Russian-olive using soil and land-use/cover data, evaluating historic land-use/cover change using mappable water-related indices addressing the primary loss of riparian arboreal ecosystems, and detecting year-to-year land-cover changes on forest conversion processes. Digital image processing techniques were used to detect the changes of arboreal ecosystems using ArcGIS ArcInfo&reg; 9.3, ENVI&reg;, and ENVI&reg; EX platforms.</p><p> Research results showed that Russian-olive at the inundated habitats of the Missouri River is abundant compared to terrestrial habitats in the Bismarck-Mandan Wildland Urban Interface. This could be a consequence of habitat quality of the floodplain, such as its silt loam and silty clay soil type, which favors Russian-olive regeneration. Russian-olive has close assemblage with cottonwood (<i>Populus deltoides</i>) and buffaloberry (<i>Shepherdia argentea</i>) trees at the lower elevations. In addition, the Russian-olive-cottonwood association correlated with low nitrogen, low pH, and high Fe, while Russian-olive- buffaloberry association occurred in highly eroded areas.</p><p> The Devils Lake sub-watershed was selected to demonstrate how both land-use/cover modification and climatic variability have caused the vulnerability of arboreal ecosystems on the fringe to such changes. Land-cover change showed that the forest acreage declined from 9% to 1%, water extent increased from 13% to 25%, and cropland extent increased from 34% to 39% between 1992 and 2006. In addition, stochastic modeling was adapted to simulate how land-use/cover change influenced forest conversion to non-forested lands at the urban-wildland fringes in Cass County. The analysis yielded two distinct statistical groups of transition probabilities for forest to non-forest, with high transition probability of unchanged forest (0.54&le; Pff &le; 0.68) from 2006 to 2011. Generally, the land-uses, such as row crops, showed an increasing trend, while grains, hay, seeds, and other crops showed a declining trend. This information is vital to forest managers for implementing restoration and conservation practices in arboreal ecosystems.</p>