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Displaying 161 - 180 of 568

Researchers are increasingly examining patterns and drivers of postfire forest recovery amid growing concern that climate change and intensifying fires will trigger ecosystem transformations. Diminished seed availability and postfire drought have…
Author(s): Caitlin E. Littlefield, Solomon Z. Dobrowski, John T. Abatzoglou, Sean A. Parks, Kimberley T. Davis
Year Published:

Increasing the pace and scale of fuel treatments to protect social and ecological values from severe wildfire is a major initiative of numerous land management agencies, organizations, and collaborative groups throughout the western United States,…
Author(s): Rob Addington, Brian G. Tavernia, Michael D. Caggiano, Matthew P. Thompson, Jason D. Lawhon, John S. Sanderson
Year Published:

We integrated a widely used forest growth and management model, the Forest Vegetation Simulator, with the FSim large wildfire simulator to study how management policies affected future wildfire over 50 years on a 1.3 million ha study area comprised…
Author(s): Alan A. Ager, Ana M. G. Barros, Rachel M. Houtman, Robert C. Seli, Michelle A. Day
Year Published:

Background: Frequent-fire forests of the western United States have undergone remarkable changes in structure, composition, and function due to historical exclusion of naturally occurring fire. Mechanized tree thinning to reduce forest density and…
Author(s): David W. Huffman, John Paul Roccaforte, Judith D. Springer, Joseph E. Crouse
Year Published:

Fuels reduction treatments to mitigate fire behavior are common in ponderosa pine ecosystems of the western United States. While initial impacts of fuel treatments have been reported, less is known about treatment longevity as live and dead fuels…
Author(s): Sharon M. Hood, Christopher R. Keyes, Katelynn J. Bowen, Duncan C. Lutes, Carl A. Seielstad
Year Published:

Climate change is causing increased wildfire activity across the western US and creating post-fire conditions that are warmer and drier than they were in the past. Scientists and managers are concerned with the potential for post-fire tree…
Author(s): Kimberley T. Davis, Lacey Hankin
Year Published:

Background: Prairie-forest ecotones are ecologically important for biodiversity and ecological processes. While these ecotones cover small areas, their sharp gradients in land cover promote rich ecological interaction and high conservation value.…
Author(s): Penelope Morgan, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Eva K. Strand, Stephen C. Bunting, James P. Riser, John T. Abatzoglou, Max W. Nielsen-Pincus, Mara Johnson
Year Published:

In the western United States, restoration of forests with historically frequent, low‐severity fire regimes often includes fuel reduction that reestablish open, early‐seral conditions while reducing fuel continuity and loading. Between 2001 and 2016…
Author(s): Justin S. Crotteau, Christopher R. Keyes, Sharon M. Hood, Andrew J. Larson
Year Published:

Following a wildfire, regeneration to forest can take decades to centuries and is no longer assured in many western U.S. environments given escalating wildfire severity and warming trends. After large fire years, managers prioritize where to…
Author(s): Nicholas A. Povak, Derek J. Churchill, C. Alina Cansler, Paul F. Hessburg, Van R. Kane, Jonathan T. Kane, James A. Lutz, Andrew J. Larson
Year Published:

After generations of fire-suppression policy, Indigenous fire management (IFM) is being reactivated as one way to mitigate wildfire in fire-prone ecosystems. Research has documented that IFM also mitigates carbon emissions, improves livelihoods and…
Author(s): William Nikolakis, Emma Roberts, Ngaio Hotte, Russell Myers Ross
Year Published:

Research Highlights: This experiment compares a range of combinations of harvest, prescribed fire, and wildfire. Leveraging a 30-year-old forest management-driven experiment, we explored the recovery of woody species composition, regeneration of the…
Author(s): R. Kasten Dumroese, Martin F. Jurgensen, Deborah S. Page-Dumroese
Year Published:

Late-1800s land surveys were used to reconstruct historical forest structure and fire over more than 235,000 ha in ponderosa pine and mixed conifer landscapes of the San Juan Mountains, Colorado, to further understand differences among regional…
Author(s): William L. Baker
Year Published:

Recent decades have witnessed an escalation in the social, economic, and ecological impacts of wildfires worldwide. Wildfire losses stem from the complex interplay of social and ecological forces at multiple scales, including global climate change,…
Author(s): Ronald L. Schumann, Miranda H. Mockrin, Alexandra D. Syphard, Joshua Whittaker, Owen F. Price, Cassandra Johnson-Gaither, Christopher T. Emrich, Van Butsic
Year Published:

Legacy effects from one disturbance may influence successional pathways by amplifying or buffering forest regeneration after the next disturbance. We assessed vegetation and tree regeneration in non-serotinous Sierra lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta…
Author(s): Lucas B. Harris, Stacy Drury, Alan H. Taylor
Year Published:

With the effects of climate change expected to intensify over the coming century, land managers will require more proactive and novel approaches to conserve and restore threatened ecosystems. In the US Intermountain West, quaking aspen (Populus…
Author(s): Alexander A. Howe, Simon M. Landhäusser, Owen T. Burney, James N. Long, Randall D. Violett, Karen Mock
Year Published:

Limber pine (Pinus flexilis), an understudied tree species important to montane and subalpine ecosystems, is listed as endangered in Alberta. Dispersal of seeds to newly disturbed, open areas by Clark's nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) is expected…
Author(s): Denyse A. Dawe, Vernon S. Peters, Michael D. Flannigan
Year Published:

Ecological droughts are deficits in soil–water availability that induce threshold-like ecosystem responses, such as causing altered or degraded plant-community conditions, which can be exceedingly difficult to reverse. However, 'ecological drought'…
Author(s): Rory O'Connor, Matthew J. Germino, David M Barnard, Caitlin M. Andrews, John Bradford, David S. Pilliod, Robert S. Arkle, Robert K. Shriver
Year Published:

The mountainous grassland ecosystem in Golden Gate National Park (South Africa) has post-fire ecological resilience. However, vegetation species composition and structure can alter when the ecosystem continually has uncontrolled fires. This study…
Author(s): Efosa G. Adagbasa, Samuel A. Adelabu, Tom W. Okello
Year Published:

Quaking or trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) is a foundational tree species, which is native, common, and broadly distributed in North America. The ecology of aspen has been extensively studied throughout its range, but both research and…
Author(s): Simon M. Landhäusser, Bradley D. Pinno, Karen Mock
Year Published:

As highly productive and biologically diverse communities, healthy quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides; hereafter aspen) forests provide a wide range of ecosystem services across western North America. Western aspen decline during the last century…
Author(s): Stanley G. Kitchen, Patrick N. Behrens, Sherel Goodrich, Ashley Green, John Guyon, Mary H. O'Brien, David Tart
Year Published: