Search by keywords, then use filters to narrow down results by type, year, topic, or ecosystem.
Displaying 21 - 40 of 636
Extensive mortality of whitebark pine, beginning in the early to mid-2000s, occurred in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) of the western US, primarily from mountain pine beetle but also from other threats such as white pine blister rust. The…
Year Published:
Quantifying the linkages between vegetation disturbance by fire and the changes in hydrologic processes leading to post-fire erosional response remains a challenge. We measured the influence of fire severity, defined as vegetation disturbance (using…
Year Published:
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…
Year Published:
As large, high-severity forest fires increase and snowpacks become more vulnerable to climate change across the western USA, it is important to understand post-fire disturbance impacts on snow hydrology. Here, we examine, quantify, parameterize,…
Year Published:
Extensive outbreaks of bark beetles have killed trees across millions of hectares of forests and woodlands in western North America. These outbreaks have led to spirited scientific, public, and policy debates about consequential increases in fire…
Year Published:
This reference presents general guidelines for planning, implementing, and evaluating whitebark pine conservation and management activities on lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management.
Year Published:
Whitebark pine plays a prominent role in high elevation ecosystems of the northern Rocky Mountains. It is an important food source for many birds and mammals as well as an essential component of watershed stabilization. Whitebark pine is vanishing…
Year Published:
The prevailing paradigm in the western U.S. is that the increase in stand-replacing wildfires in historically frequent-fire dry forests is due to unnatural fuel loads that have resulted from management activities including fire suppression, logging…
Year Published:
Wildfires shape the distribution and structure of vegetation across the inland northwestern United States. However, fire activity is expected to increase given the current rate of climate change, with uncertain outcomes. A fire impact that has not…
Year Published:
In 1988, fires burned 36% (about 800,000 acres) of Yellowstone National Park (YNP). At the time, the size and severity of these fires was greater than scientists and land managers were used to and they were attributed to excessive fuel loadings that…
Year Published:
The pine forests in the southern portion of the Rocky Mountains are a heterogeneous mosaic of disturbance and recovery. The most extensive and intensive stress and mortality are received from human activity, fire, and mountain pine beetles (MPB;…
Year Published:
In heterogeneous forest landscapes prone to wildfires, accurate classification of the fire regime beyond direct observations and records is difficult. This is in part due to the methods used to reconstruct historical fires in complex, heterogeneous…
Year Published:
The 2000 Valley Complex wildfire burned in steep montane forests with ash cap soils in western Montana, USA. The effects of high soil burn severity on forest soil hydrologic function were examined using rainfall simulations (100mmh-1 for 1 h) on 0.5…
Year Published:
The persistence of ponderosa pine and lodgepole pine forests in the 21st century depends to a large extent on how seedling emergence and establishment are influenced by driving climate and environmental variables, which largely govern forest…
Year Published:
Climate science and understanding how climate change may affect the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) have come a long way since our 1992 Yellowstone Science article (Romme and Turner 1992, based on Romme and Turner 1991). In…
Year Published:
Periodic fire is thought to improve whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) regeneration by reducing competition and creating openings, but the mechanisms by which fire affects seedling establishment are poorly understood. I compared seedling…
Year Published:
Patches of live, dead, and dying trees resulting from bark beetle-caused mortality alter spatial and temporal variability in the canopy and surface fuel complex through changes in the foliar moisture content of attacked trees and through the…
Year Published:
Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) populations are declining nearly rangewide from a combination of factors, including mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, 1902) outbreaks, the exotic pathogen Cronartium ribicola J.C. Fisch…
Year Published:
The risk of bark beetle outbreaks is widely predicted to increase because of a warming climate that accelerates temperature-driven beetle population growth and drought stress that impairs host tree defenses. However, few if any studies have…
Year Published:
The implementation of US federal forest restoration programs on national forests is a complex process that requires balancing diverse socioecological goals with project economics. Despite both the large geographic scope and substantial investments…
Year Published: