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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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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
Year Published:

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
Year Published:

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
Year Published:

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
Year Published:

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
Year Published:

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
Year Published:

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
Year Published:

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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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
Year Published:

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
Year Published:

Water is critical to life, and the effects of climate change on ecosystems are mediated through changes in hydrology. Changes in how snow accumulates and melts are one of the more consistently noted climate-induced changes to water in the western…
Author(s): Charles H. Luce
Year Published:

Variable selection in ecological niche modelling can influence model projections to a degree comparable to variations in future climate scenarios. Consequently, it is important to select feature (variable) subsets for optimizing model performance…
Author(s): James L. Tracy, Antonio Trabucco, A. Michelle Lawing, J. Tomasz Giermakowski, Maria D. Tchakerian, Gail M. Drus, Robert N. Coulson
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This chapter describes the ecology of important disturbance regimes in the Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USFS) Northern Region and the Greater Yellowstone Area, hereafter called the Northern Rockies region, and potential shifts in…
Author(s): Rachel A. Loehman, Barbara J. Bentz, Gregg DeNitto, Robert E. Keane, Mary Manning, Jacob P. Duncan, Joel M. Egan, Marcus B. Jackson, Sandra Kegley, I. Blakley Lockman, Dean E. Pearson, James A. Powell, Steve Shelly, Brytten E. Steed, Paul J. Zambino
Year Published:

Environmental change is accelerating in the 21st century, but how multiple drivers may interact to alter forest resilience remains uncertain. In forests affected by large high-severity disturbances, tree regeneration is a resilience linchpin that…
Author(s): Winslow D. Hansen, Kristin H. Braziunas, Werner Rammer, Rupert Seidl, Monica G. Turner
Year Published:

In many forested ecosystems, it is increasingly recognized that the probability of burning is substantially reduced within the footprint of previously burned areas. This self-limiting effect of wildland fire is considered a fundamental emergent…
Author(s): Sean A. Parks, Marc-Andre Parisien, Carol Miller, Lisa M. Holsinger, Scott L. Baggett
Year Published: