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Historic frequency and severity of fire in whitebark pine forests of the Cascade Mountain Range, USA
Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) is a foundation species of high elevation forest ecosystems in the Cascade Mountain Range of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. We examined fire evidence on 55 fire history sites located in the…
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The objectives of this study were to identify whitebark pine fire-climate interactions, and tree establishment and mortality patterns in a landscape context. Specific objectives were to : 1) develop a whitebark pine tree-ring chronology to date fire…
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The effect of topography on wildfire distribution in the Canadian Rockies has been the subject of debate. We suspect the size of the study area, and the assumption fire return intervals are distributed as a Weibull distribution used in many previous…
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The boreal forest of Alberta, Canada, is under pressure from a rapid expansion of the wildland–human interface driven by natural resources exploitation. The specific impact of these changes on area burned remains poorly understood. We addressed this…
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Like many fire-adapted ecosystems, decades of fire exclusion policy in the Rocky Mountains and Foothills natural regions of southern Alberta, Canada are raising concern over the loss of ecological integrity. Departure from historical conditions is…
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Wildland fire is an important natural process in many ecosystems. However, fire exclusion has reduced frequency of fire and area burned in many dry forest types, which may affect vegetation structure and composition, and potential fire behavior. In…
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We demonstrated the utility of digital fire atlases by analyzing forest fire extent across cold, dry, and mesic forests, within and outside federally designated wilderness areas during three different fire management periods: 1900 to 1934, 1935 to…
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A series of environmental changes from late-glacial ice recession through the early Holocene are revealed in a 7000-yr-long record of pollen, charcoal, geochemistry, and stable isotopes from Blacktail Pond, a closed-basin lake in Yellowstone…
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In many U.S. federally designated wilderness areas, wildfires are likely to burn of their own accord due to favorable management policies and remote location. Previous research suggested that limitations on fire size can result from the evolution of…
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Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) is in serious decline across its range, largely due to the combined effects of Cronartium ribicola J. C. Fisch (an introduced fungal pathogen that causes white pine blister rust), replacement by late…
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Recent work in model systems has demonstrated significant effects of rapid evolutionary change on ecological processes (eco-evolutionary dynamics). Fewer studies have addressed whether eco-evolutionary dynamics structure natural ecosystems. We…
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The interaction of fires, where one fire burns into another recently burned area, is receiving increased attention from scientists and land managers wishing to describe the role of fire scars in affecting landscape pattern and future fire spread.…
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A 9400-yr-old record from Crevice Lake, a semi-closed alkaline lake in northern Yellowstone National Park, was analyzed for pollen, charcoal, geochemistry, mineralogy, diatoms, and stable isotopes to develop a nuanced understanding of Holocene…
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Climate change, forests, fire, water, and fish: building resilient landscapes, streams, and managers
Fire will play an important role in shaping forest and stream ecosystems as the climate changes. Historic observations show increased dryness accompanying more widespread fire and forest die-off. These events punctuate gradual changes to ecosystems…
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This paper synthesizes existing information about the disturbance ecology of high-elevation five-needle pine ecosystems, describing disturbances regimes, how they are changing or are expected to change, and the implications for ecosystem persistence…
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Reconstructing specific fire-history metrics with charcoal records has been difficult, in part because calibration data sets are rare. We calibrated charcoal accumulation in sediments from three medium (14-19 ha) and one large (4250 ha) lake with a…
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The High Five symposium is devoted to exchanging information about a small group of pines with little commercial value but great importance to the ecology of high-mountain ecosystems of the West. These High Five pines include the subalpine and…
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Whitebark pine is declining across much of its range in North America because of the combined effects of mountain pine beetle epidemics, fire exclusion policies, and widespread exotic blister rust infections. This management guide summarizes the…
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Persistent changes in tree mortality rates can alter forest structure, composition, and ecosystem services such as carbon sequestration. Our analyses of longitudinal data from unmanaged old forests in the western United States showed that background…
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Yellowstone National Park has been an important location for paleoecologic studies that focus on the use of charcoal data to reconstruct past fire activity and on the role of climate variations in shaping past vegetation and fire regimes. One…
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