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Since the 1980s, the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has transformed from an agency predominantly focused on timber production to one focused on recreation and ecosystem management. This shift is particularly remarkable because it occurred without major substantive national forest policy changes. During this period, many national forests changed their forest planning processes in ways that provided greater opportunity for public input into forest plans, and in 2012 the USFS issued new planning rules that institutionalized these practices. In this study, we ask: how has the planning process changed over time, and how have these changes shaped forest plan outcomes? To answer these questions, we conduct a comparative case study of two national forests—the Lake Tahoe Basin Management Unit and the Inyo National Forest—that produced forest plans in the 1980s and again in the 2010s. We use the Network of Action Situations (NAS) approach to compare planning processes over time and across forests. We find that in addition to the changes mandated by the 2012 rules, both forests developed a series of forums to engage the public in plan development and review, and that increased stakeholder engagement has helped shape forest priorities. These findings suggest that greater involvement by regional stakeholders could pressure the USFS to adopt more regional approaches for addressing challenges like climate change and wildfire risk. 

GRB 190829A at z = 0.0785 is the fourth closest long GRB ever detected by the Neil Gehrels Swift observatory, and the third confirmed case with a very high-energy component. We present our multiwavelength analysis of this rare event, focusing on its early stages of evolution, and including data from Swift, the MASTER global network of optical telescopes, ALMA, and ATCA. We report sensitive limits on the linear polarization of the optical emission, disfavouring models of off-axis jets to explain the delayed afterglow peak. The study of the multiwavelength light curves and broad-band spectra supports a model with at least two emission components: a bright reverse shock emission, visible at early times in the optical and X-rays and, later, in the radio band; and a forward shock component dominating at later times and lower radio frequencies. A combined study of the prompt and afterglow properties shows many similarities with cosmological long GRBs, suggesting that GRB 190829A is an example of classical GRBs in the nearby universe.

 

Searches for optical transients are usually performed with a cadence of days to weeks, optimized for supernova discovery. The optical fast transient sky is still largely unexplored, with only a few surveys to date having placed meaningful constraints on the detection of extragalactic transients evolving at sub-hour time-scales. Here, we present the results of deep searches for dim, minute-time-scale extragalactic fast transients using the Dark Energy Camera, a core facility of our all-wavelength and all-messenger Deeper, Wider, Faster programme. We used continuous 20 s exposures to systematically probe time-scales down to 1.17 min at magnitude limits g > 23 (AB), detecting hundreds of transient and variable sources. Nine candidates passed our strict criteria on duration and non-stellarity, all of which could be classified as flare stars based on deep multiband imaging. Searches for fast radio burst and gamma-ray counterparts during simultaneous multifacility observations yielded no counterparts to the optical transients. Also, no long-term variability was detected with pre-imaging and follow-up observations using the SkyMapper optical telescope. We place upper limits for minute-time-scale fast optical transient rates for a range of depths and time-scales. Finally, we demonstrate that optical g-band light-curve behaviour alone cannot discriminate between confirmed extragalactic fast transients such as prompt GRB flashes and Galactic stellar flares.