Research Database
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7
Less fuel for the next fire? Short-interval fire delays forest recovery and interacting drivers amplify effects
Year: 2023
As 21st-century climate and disturbance dynamics depart from historic baselines, ecosystem resilience is uncertain. Multiple drivers are changing simultaneously, and interactions among drivers could amplify ecosystem vulnerability to change. Subalpine forests in Greater Yellowstone (Northern Rocky Mountains, USA) were historically resilient to infrequent (100–300 year), severe fire. We sampled paired short-interval (<30-year) and long-interval (>125-year) post-fire plots most recently burned between 1988 and 2018 to address two questions: (1) How do short-interval fire, climate,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Beyond red crowns: complex changes in surface and crown fuels and their interactions 32 years following mountain pine beetle epidemics in south-central Oregon, USA
Year: 2019
Background Mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins; MPB), a bark beetle native to western North America, has caused vast areas of tree mortality over the last several decades. The majority of this mortality has been in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Douglas ex Loudon) forests and has heightened concerns over the potential for extreme fire behavior across large landscapes. Although considerable research has emerged concerning influence of MPB on forest fuels, there has been little work in the climax lodgepole pine forests of south-central Oregon, USA. Specifically, we assessed…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Historical patterns of fire severity and forest structure and composition in a landscape structured by frequent large fires: Pumice Plateau ecoregion, Oregon, USA
Year: 2019
Context Lack of quantitative observations of extent, frequency, and severity of large historical fires constrains awareness of departure of contemporary conditions from those that demonstrated resistance and resilience to frequent fire and recurring drought. Objectives Compare historical and contemporary fire and forest conditions for a dry forest landscape with few barriers to fire spread. Methods Quantify differences in (1) historical (1700–1918) and contemporary (1985–2015) fire extent, fire rotation, and stand-replacing fire and (2) historical (1914–1924) and contemporary (2012) forest…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Climate changes and wildfire alter vegetation of Yellowstone National Park, but forest cover persists
Year: 2017
We present landscape simulation results contrasting effects of changing climates on forest vegetation and fire regimes in Yellowstone National Park, USA, by mid-21st century. We simulated potential changes to fire dynamics and forest characteristics under three future climate projections representing a range of potential future conditions using the FireBGCv2 model. Under the future climate scenarios with moderate warming (>2°C) and moderate increases in precipitation (3–5%), model simulations resulted in 1.2–4.2 times more burned area, decreases in forest cover (10–44%), and reductions in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Impacts of lodgepole pine dwarf mistletoe (Arceuthobium americanum) infestation on stand structure and fuel load in lodgepole pine dominated forests in central Colorado
Year: 2017
Parasitic plants are capable of causing substantial alterations to plant communities through impacts on individual host plants. Lodgepole pine dwarf mistletoe is an important parasite in forests of the western USA that causes reductions to productivity and is thought to alter wildland fuel complexes. These impacts are hypothesized to vary with infestation severity. To test this, we used a linear mixed modeling approach to evaluate the relationship between dwarf mistletoe infestation severity and parameters representing stand structure and surface and canopy fuels in infested lodgepole pine…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Species composition influences management outcomes following mountain pine beetle in lodgepole pine-dominated forests
Year: 2015
Mountain pine beetle outbreaks have killed lodgepole pine on more than one million hectares of Colorado and southern Wyoming forest during the last decade and have prompted harvest operations throughout the region. In northern Colorado, lodgepole pine commonly occurs in mixed stands with subalpine fir, Engelmann spruce, and aspen. Variation in tree species composition will influence structure, fuel profiles and fire hazard as forests recover from bark beetle outbreaks, and this diversity has implications for design and implementation of fuel reduction treatments. We used stand inventory data…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Surface Fire Intensity Influences Simulated Crown Fire Behavior in Lodgepole Pine Forests with Recent Mountain Pine Beetle-Caused Tree Mortality
Year: 2012
Recent bark beetle outbreaks have had a significant impact on forests throughout western North America and have generated concerns about interactions and feedbacks between beetle attacks and fire. However, research has been hindered by a lack of experimental studies and the use of fire behavior models incapable of accounting for the heterogeneous fuel complexes. We populated the Wildland-Urban Interface Fire Dynamics Simulator with data from 11 field sites to investigate the effect of mountain pine beetle (MPB)-caused tree mortality on simulated crown fire behavior across a range of surface…
Publication Type: Journal Article