Research Database
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4
Social Vulnerability to Climate Change in Temperate Forest Areas: New Measures of Exposure, Sensitivity, and Adaptive Capacity
Year: 2018
Human communities in forested areas that are expected to experience climate-related changes have received little attention in the scholarly literature on vulnerability assessment. Many communities rely on forest ecosystems to support their social and economic livelihoods. Climate change could alter these ecosystems. We developed a framework that measures social vulnerability to slow-onset climate-related changes in forest ecosystems. We focused on temperate forests because this biome is expected to experience dramatic change in the coming years, with adverse effects for humans. We advance…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Influences of fire–vegetation feedbacks and post‐fire recovery rates on forest landscape vulnerability to altered fire regimes
Year: 2018
In the context of ongoing climatic warming, forest landscapes face increasing risk of conversion to non‐forest vegetation through alteration of their fire regimes and their post‐fire recovery dynamics. However, this pressure could be amplified or dampened, depending on how fire‐driven changes to vegetation feed back to alter the extent or behaviour of subsequent fires. Here we develop a mathematical model to formalize understanding of how fire–vegetation feedbacks and the time to forest recovery following high‐severity (i.e. stand‐replacing) fire affect the extent and stability of forest…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Advancing Dendrochronological Studies of Fire in the United States
Year: 2018
Dendroecology is the science that dates tree rings to their exact calendar year of formation to study processes that influence forest ecology (e.g., Speer 2010 [1], Amoroso et al., 2017 [2]). Reconstruction of past fire regimes is a core application of dendroecology, linking fire history to population dynamics and climate effects on tree growth and survivorship. Since the early 20th century when dendrochronologists recognized that tree rings retained fire scars (e.g., Figure 1), and hence a record of past fires, they have conducted studies worldwide to reconstruct [2] the historical range and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Looking beyond the mean: Drivers of variability in postfire stand development of conifers in Greater Yellowstone
Year: 2018
High-severity, infrequent fires in forests shape landscape mosaics of stand age and structure for decades to centuries, and forest structure can vary substantially even among same-aged stands. This variability among stand structures can affect landscape-scale carbon and nitrogen cycling, wildlife habitat availability, and vulnerability to subsequent disturbances. We used an individual-based forest process model (iLand) to ask: Over 300 years of postfire stand development, how does variation in early regeneration densities versus abiotic conditions influence among-stand structural variability…
Publication Type: Journal Article