Frank K. Lake

US Forest Service | FS · Pacific Southwest Research Station

This book celebrates the natural history of the Klamath Mountains of northwest California and southwest Oregon through stories of diversity and resilience over deep time. Shaped by geology, these mountains form an ancient jigsaw puzzle and topographic mosaic dissected by big-shouldered river canyons and sharp ridgelines that create localized clima...

Significance We provide the first assessment of aboveground live tree biomass in a mixed conifer forest over the late Holocene. The biomass record, coupled with local Native oral history and fire scar records, shows that Native burning practices, along with a natural lightning-based fire regime, promoted long-term stability of the forest structure...

Prescribed fire is used extensively as a management tool in fire-adapted landscapes of the American West to maintain ecosystem structure and function while reducing wildfire risk. Seasonally specific prescribed fire is used by many Indigenous groups to increase the quality and quantity of cultural resources and promote desired patterns of habitat d...

Indigenous communities in the Pacific West of North America have long depended on fire to steward their environments, and they are increasingly asserting the importance of cultural burning to achieve goals for ecological and social restoration. We synthesized literature regarding objectives and effects of cultural burning in this region within an e...

Forest densification, wildfires, and disease can reduce the growth and survival of hardwood trees that are important for biological and cultural diversity within the Pacific Northwest of USA. Large, full-crowned hardwoods that produce fruit and that form large cavities used by wildlife were sustained by frequent, low-severity fires prior to Euro-Am...

Tribal communities in the Pacific Northwest of the United States of America (USA) have long-standing relationships to ancestral lands now managed by federal land management agencies. In recent decades, federal and state governments have increasingly recognized tribal rights to resources on public lands and to participate in their management. In sup...

North American tribes have traditional knowledge about fire effects on ecosystems, habitats, and resources. For millennia, tribes have used fire to promote valued resources. Sharing our collective understanding of fire, derived from traditional and western knowledge systems, can benefit landscapes and people. We organized two workshops to investiga...

Forests historically associated with frequent fire have changed dramatically due to fire suppression and past harvesting over the last century. The buildup of ladder fuels, which carry fire from the surface of the forest floor to tree crowns, is one of the critical changes, and it has contributed to uncharacteristically large and severe fires. The...

A USDA National Agroforestry Technical Note on the role of indigenous traditional ecological knowledge in agroforestry systems of the past, present, and future.

The influence of Native American land-use practices on vegetation composition and structure has long been a subject of significant debate. This is particularly true in portions of the western United States where tribal hunter-gatherers did not use agriculture to meet subsistence and other cultural needs. Climate has been viewed as the dominant dete...

Do qualitative classifications of ecological conditions for harvesting culturally important forest plants correspond to quantitative differences among sites? To address this question, we blended scientific methods (SEK) and traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) to identify conditions on sites considered good, marginal, or poor for harvesting the l...

National forest management efforts have generally moved toward collaborative and participatory approaches at a variety of scales. This includes, at a larger scale, greater public participation in transparent and inclusive democratic processes and, at a smaller scale, more engagement with local communities. Participatory approaches are especially im...

Background/Question/Methods Prescribed fire is used as a primary agroforestry tool by many Native Californian peoples for the maintenance of diverse terrestrial and aquatic resource systems. Tanoak dominated stands within the Tanoak-Douglas Fir-Madrone alliance are of particular importance to mid- and lower-Klamath River Tribes as gathering sites...

Background/Question/Methods We blended methods from scientific and traditional ecological knowledge to describe forest conditions on sites considered good (G), marginal (M), or poor (P) for harvesting the leaves of beargrass (X. tenax) used in tribal basket weaving. We relied on voluntary participation of six expert tribal weavers, a stratified,...

This chapter sets the context for the following sociocultural sections of the synthesis by providing information on the broader social, cultural, and economic patterns in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascade Range. Demographic influences surrounding population change, including those accounted for through amenity migration, are examined. Social a...

American Indian and Alaska Native tribes are uniquely affected by climate change. Indigenous peoples have depended on a wide variety of native fungi, plant and animal species for food, medicine, ceremonies, community and economic health for countless generations. Climate change stands to impact the species and ecosystems that constitute tribal trad...

Climate change related impacts, such as increased frequency and intensity of wildfires, higher temperatures, extreme changes to ecosystem processes, forest conversion and habitat degradation are threatening tribal access to valued resources. Climate change is and will affect the quantity and quality of resources tribes depend upon to perpetuate the...

Many California Indian tribes utilized mushrooms for food, medicine, and/or technological purposes. This paper summarizes which mushrooms were important to different California Indian tribes in historic and modern times and how they were harvested, prepared, and stored. Oral interviews were conducted and the ethnographic literature reviewed to deta...

Background/Question/Methods: Incorporating traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) with wildland fire and fisheries research and management can provide opportunities, but also some challenges. This presentation shares the perspective of a federal agency research ecologist, of tribal descent, who works with and lives in a predominantly rural tribal c...

The colonial history of North America presents a contrast between Mexico and the two predominantly English-speaking countries, the United States and Canada. In Mexico, indigenous and other local communities own considerable forested lands, a consequence of the Mexican Revolution of the early twentieth century. In the United States, forest land is n...

Background/Question/Methods The Karuk Tribe of the mid-Klamath watershed in northwestern California uses prescribed fire to cultivate and maintain plant populations for food, basket materials, browse for game, medicine, and ceremonial purposes. The objective of this study is to quantify the temporal effects of prescribed fire on culturally import...

Background/Question/Methods Our study tests the hypothesis that Native Americans in the Klamath Mountains of northwestern California significantly influenced forest composition and structure through the extensive use of fire. Most existing regional paleo-fire and vegetation studies have been conducted at high elevations away from Native American s...

Background/Question/Methods In the Karuk Tribe’s worldview, planetary stewardship is maintained through the place-based spiritual and cultural philosophy of World Renewal. A philosophy of Renewal reaffirms the responsibility of humans as stewards as well as a critical ecosystem component. The Tribe believes in renewal of the human-environment rel...

This article highlights the findings of the literature on aboriginal fire from the human-and the land-centered disciplines, and suggests that the traditional knowledge of indigenous peoples be incorporated into plans for reintroducing fire to the nation's forests. Traditional knowledge represents the outcome of long experimentation with application...

Color markers in insects facilitate research in many areas, including developmental genetics and the study of sperm competition. Laboratory populations of the soapberry bug Jadera haematoloma contain two color variants, orange and lemon, in addition to the wild-type, red. Results of experimental crosses among these three types support a two-locus m...

The use of Native American fire regimes evolved in the Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion over millennia. A mixture of Native American and Euro-American sociocultural management has developed from adaptations to climate, topography, ecological processes, and land use practices. This research incorporates Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to partially...