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A warming climate may increase the frequency and severity of stand-replacing wildfires, reducing carbon (C) storage in forest ecosystems. Understanding the variability of postfire C cycling on heterogeneous landscapes is critical for predicting…
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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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Land managers of the northern Rocky Mountains and south-central U.S. are challenged with numerous social and ecological changes, many of which are linked to climate change. The work presented here focuses on two important research gaps: 1) managers…
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A goal of fire management in wilderness is to allow fire to play its natural ecological role without intervention. Unfortunately, most unplanned ignitions in wilderness are suppressed, in part because of the risk they might pose to values outside of…
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Changes in key drivers (e.g., climate, disturbance regimes and land use) may affect the sustainability of forest landscapes and set the stage for increased tension among competing ecosystem services. We addressed two questions about a suite of…
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As part of the 13th Whitebark Pine Ecosystem Science and Management Workshop - Challenges of Whitebark Pine Restoration, participants visited a whitebark pine restoration area near Fairy Lake in the Bridger Mountains north of Bozeman, MT (Figure 1…
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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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Wildland fires often cause extreme changes in the landscape that drastically influence surface runoff and soil erosion, which can impact forest resources, aquatic habitats, water supplies, public safety, and forest access infrastructure such as…
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Widespread outbreaks of the mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) in the lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. ex Loud. var. latifolia Engelm.) forests of North America have produced stands with significant levels of recent tree…
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Recent bark beetle outbreaks have had a significant impact on forests throughout western North America and have generated concerns about interactions and feedbacks between beetle attacks and fire. However, research has been hindered by a lack of…
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Designing woody fuel sampling methods that quickly, accurately and efficiently assess biomass at relevant spatial scales requires extensive knowledge of each sampling method's strengths, weaknesses and tradeoffs. In this study, we compared…
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We tested whether reduced parasite loads might contribute to high post-fire abundances of deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus). We performed parasite examinations of 54 mice captured in burned forest in the area of Davis Fire (western Montana, USA),…
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Understanding how disturbances interact to shape ecosystems is a key challenge in ecology. In forests of western North America, the degree to which recent bark beetle outbreaks and subsequent fires may be linked (e.g., outbreak severity affects fire…
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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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We present a technique for modelling conditional burn probability patterns in two dimensions for large wildland fires. The intended use for the model is strategic program planning when information about future fire weather and event durations is…
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Climate projections for the next 20-50 years forecast higher temperatures and variable precipitation for many landscapes in the western United States. Climate changes may cause or contribute to threshold shifts, or tipping points, where relatively…
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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 transformation of fuels resulting from the mountain pine beetle epidemic is unprecedented in its large geographic extent and the rapid pace of the transformation. This paper describes a proposed fire risk and hazard characterization system, as…
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Western larch is one of the most fire-adapted conifers in western North America. Its historical perpetuation depended upon regular fire disturbances, which creates open stand conditions and mineral seedbeds. A stand of 200- to 500-year-old larch in…
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The Western Mountain Initiative (WMI), a consortium of research groups in the Western United States, focuses on understanding and predicting responses-especially sensitivities, thresholds, resistance, and resilience-of mountain ecosystems to…
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