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Climate Change and Rocky Mountain Ecosystems describes the results of a cutting-edge effort to assess climate change vulnerabilities and develop adaptation options for ecosystems in the Northern Rocky Mountains region of the United States, focusing…
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In this chapter, we focus on the ecosystem services provided to people who visit, live adjacent to, or otherwise benefit from natural resources on public lands. Communities in the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USFS) Northern Region…
Author(s): Travis Warziniack, Megan Lawson, S. Karen Dante-Wood
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Purpose of Review: I sought to review the contributions of recent literature and prior foundational papers to our understanding of drought and fire. In this review, I summarize recent literature on drought and fire in the western USA and discuss…
Author(s): Jeremy S. Littell
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Roughly 3% of the Earth's land surface burns annually, representing a critical exchange of energy and matter between the land and atmosphere via combustion. Fires range from slow smouldering peat fires, to low-intensity surface fires, to intense…
Author(s): Sally Archibald, Caroline E. R. Lehmann, Claire M. Belcher, William J. Bond, Ross A. Bradstock, Anne Laure Daniau, K. G. Dexter, Elisabeth J. Forrestel, M. Greve, Tianhua He, Steven I. Higgins, William A. Hoffmann, Byron B. Lamont, D. J. McGlinn, G. R. Moncrieff, Colin P. Osborne, Juli G. Pausas, Owen F. Price, Brad S. Ripley, Brendan M. Rogers, Dylan W. Schwilk, M. F. Simon, Merritt R. Turetsky, Guido R. Van der Werf, Amy E. Zanne
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Forest fragmentation is pervasive throughout the world's forests, impacting growing conditions and carbon (C) dynamics through edge effects that produce gradients in microclimate, biogeochemistry, and stand structure. Despite the majority of global…
Author(s): Ian A. Smith, Lucy R. Hutyra, Andrew B. Reinmann, Julia K. Marrs, Jonathan Thompson
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Forest resilience to climate change is a global concern given the potential effects of increased disturbance activity, warming temperatures and increased moisture stress on plants. We used a multi-regional dataset of 1485 sites across 52 wildfires…
Author(s): Camille Stevens-Rumann, Kerry Kemp, Philip E. Higuera, Brian J. Harvey, Monica T. Rother, Daniel C. Donato, Penelope Morgan, Thomas T. Veblen
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The projected rapid changes in climate will affect the unique vegetation assemblages of the Northern Rockies region in myriad ways, both directly through shifts in vegetation growth, mortality, and regeneration, and indirectly through changes in…
Author(s): Robert E. Keane, M. F. Mahalovich, Barry Bollenbacher, Mary Manning, Rachel A. Loehman, Theresa B. Jain, Lisa M. Holsinger, Andrew J. Larson, Andrew J. Webster
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For millennia, wildfires have markedly influenced forests and non-forested landscapes of the western United States (US), and they are increasingly seen as having substantial impacts on society and nature. There is growing concern over what kinds and…
Author(s): Max A. Moritz, Christopher Topik, Craig D. Allen, Paul F. Hessburg, Penelope Morgan, Dennis C. Odion, Thomas T. Veblen, Ian M. McCullough
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Biomass energy produced as a byproduct of forest clearing is increasingly being advocated in the western United States as a “win-win” for reducing fire risks and replacing fossil fuels. Many assumptions that justify thinning and biomass approaches,…
Author(s): Dominick A. DellaSala, M. Koopman
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Outdoor recreation is an important benefit provided by Federally managed and other public lands throughout the Rocky Mountains. National forests in the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USFS) Northern Region and Greater Yellowstone…
Author(s): Michael S. Hand, Megan Lawson
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Natural resource managers face the need to develop strategies to adapt to projected future climates. Few existing climate adaptation frameworks prescribe where to place management actions to be most effective under anticipated future climate…
Author(s): Kathryn Ireland, Andrew J. Hansen, Robert E. Keane, Kristin Legg, Rob Gump
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Fire is a dynamic ecological process in forests and impacts the carbon (C) cycle through direct combustion emissions, tree mortality, and by impairing the ability of surviving trees to sequester carbon. While studies on young trees have demonstrated…
Author(s): Aaron M. Sparks, Crystal A. Kolden, Alistair M. S. Smith, Luigi Boschetti, Daniel M. Johnson, Mark A. Cochrane
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Changing climate and increasing area burned pose a challenge to forest carbon (C) storage, which is compounded by an elevated risk of high‐severity wildfire due to long‐term fire suppression in the western US. Restoration treatments that reduce tree…
Author(s): Shuang Liang, Matthew D. Hurteau, Anthony L. Westerling
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During the 21st century, climate change is expected to alter aquatic habitats throughout the Northern Rocky Mountains, intermountain basins, and western Great Plains. Particularly in montane watersheds, direct changes are likely to include warmer…
Author(s): Michael K. Young, Daniel J. Isaak, Scott Spaulding, Cameron A. Thomas, Scott A. Barndt, Matthew C. Groce, Dona L. Horan, David E. Nagel
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Accurate characterization of Carbon (C) consequences of forest disturbances and management is critical for informed climate mitigation and adaptation strategies. While research into generalized properties of the forest C cycle informs policy and…
Author(s): Feng A. Zhao, Sean P. Healey, Chengquan Huang, James P. McCarter, Chris Garrard, Sara A. Goeking, Zhiliang Zhu
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Building resilience to natural disturbances is a key to managing forests for adaptation to climate change. To date, most climate adaptation guidance has focused on recommendations for frequent‐fire forests, leaving few published guidelines for…
Author(s): Joshua S. Halofsky, Daniel C. Donato, Jerry F. Franklin, Jessica E. Halofsky, David L. Peterson, Brian J. Harvey
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Temperature and moisture affect organisms through their operational environment and the thin boundary layer immediately above their tissues, and these effects are measured at short time scales. When a human (a mammal) wearing a dark insulative layer…
Author(s): Kevin S. McKelvey, Polly C. Buotte
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Wildfire, climate and ecosystem are interactive components of the Earth system (Bowman et al 2009, Andela et al 2017). Climate and fuel moisture, which is heavily impacted by atmospheric conditions, are primary drivers for fire occurrence and…
Author(s): Yongqiang Liu
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Community-level climate change indicators have been proposed to appraise the impact of global warming on community composition. However, non-climate factors may also critically influence species distribution and biological community assembly. The…
Author(s): Adrián Regos, Miguel Clavero, Manuela D'Amen, Antoine Guisan, Lluis Brotons
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As climate change alters global fire regimes, fire and forest managers must prioritize management actions that simultaneously protect sensitive resources and allow fire to maintain its ecological role. Over the last twenty years, this task has…
Author(s): Diana F. Tomback, Elizabeth R. Pansing
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