insects and fire

Previous research has focused on quantifying fuel loadings and using operational fire behavior models to understand changes in fire severity following MPB outbreaks. In this study however, researchers used direct field measurements taken from the 2012 Pole Creek Fire that burned in lodgepole pine forests in central Oregon’s Eastern Cascade Mountains, which had experienced a MPB epidemic 8-15 years prior to the fire. They examined the combined effects of MPB and fire disturbances on stand structure, and investigated the influence of previous MPB severity and fire weather on subsequent fire severity and cumulative disturbance severity.

To determine the influences of mountain pine beetle epidemics in lodgepole pine forests in south-central Oregon, researchers looked at how ground, surface, ladder, and crown fuels change over time in response to beetle epidemics, and how these epidemics influence current and future fire behavior. By looking at similar stands of varying ages researchers documented changes in stand development and fuels over time and developed a chronosequence covering a range of post-beetle epidemic conditions. Fire behavior was determined at multiple scales using several standard fuel models.