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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…
Author(s): Michael D. Flannigan, Brad C. Hawkes, Marc-Andre Parisien, Marie-Pierre Rogeau, Rick Arthur
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Polly C. Buotte, Jeffrey A. Hicke, Haiganoush K. Preisler, John T. Abatzoglou, Kenneth F. Raffa, Jesse A. Logan
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…
Author(s): Molly L. Retzlaff, Signe B. Leirfallom, Robert E. Keane
Year Published:

Understanding the causes and consequences of rapid environmental change is an essential scientific frontier, particularly given the threat of climate- and land use-induced changes in disturbance regimes. In western North America, recent widespread…
Author(s): Garrett W. Meigs, Harold S. Zald, John L. Campbell, William S. Keeton, Robert E. Kennedy
Year Published:

Ecological niche models predict plant responses to climate change by circumscribing species distributions within a multivariate environmental framework. Most projections based on modern bioclimatic correlations imply that high-elevation species are…
Author(s): Virginia Iglesias, Teresa R. Krause, Cathy L. Whitlock
Year Published:

Recent large and severe outbreaks of native bark beetles have raised concern among the general public and land managers about potential for amplified fire activity in western North America. To date, the majority of studies examining bark beetle…
Author(s): Robert A. Andrus, Thomas T. Veblen, Brian J. Harvey, Sarah Hart
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Forest fires fundamentally shape the habitats available for wildlife. Current predictions for fire under a warming climate suggest larger and more severe fires may occur, thus challenging scientists and managers to understand and predict impacts of…
Author(s): Ellen Cheng, Karen E. Hodges, Scott Mills
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…
Author(s): Signe B. Leirfallom, Robert E. Keane, Diana F. Tomback, Solomon Z. Dobrowski
Year Published:

Spatially distributed snow depth and snow duration data were collected over two to four snow seasons during water years 2011–2014 in experimental forest plots within the Cedar River Municipal Watershed, 50 km east of Seattle, Washington, USA. These…
Author(s): Susan E. Dickerson-Lange, James A. Lutz, Rolf Gersonde, Kael A. Martin, Jenna E. Forsyth, Jessica D. Lundquist
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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…
Author(s): Judy L. Perkins
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…
Author(s): Christian Temperli, Thomas T. Veblen, Sarah Hart, Dominik Kulakowski, Alan J. Tepley
Year Published:

Bark beetle outbreaks and wildfires are principal drivers of change in western North American forests, and both have increased in severity and extent in recent years. These two agents of disturbance interact in complex ways to shape forest structure…
Author(s): Michael J. Jenkins, Justin B. Runyon, Christopher J. Fettig, Wesley G. Page, Barbara J. Bentz
Year Published:

Mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreaks within the previous 10-15 years have affected millions of hectares of lodgepole pine forests in western North America. Concerns about the influence of recent tree mortality on changes in fire behaviour amongst…
Author(s): Wesley G. Page, Michael J. Jenkins, Martin E. Alexander
Year Published:

Recent work has demonstrated that evolutionary processes shape ecological dynamics on relatively short timescales (eco-evolutionary dynamics), but demonstrating these effects at large spatial scales in natural landscapes has proven difficult. We…
Author(s): Matt V. Talluto, Craig W. Benkman
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The final webinar in the Future Forest Webinar Series provided an example of how managers utilized available science to address questions about post-epidemic forest conditions. Assessments of current conditions and projected trends, and how these…
Author(s): Claudia Regan, Barry Bollenbacher, Rob Gump, Michael Hillis
Year Published:

Widespread tree mortality caused by outbreaks of native bark beetles (Circulionidae: Scolytinae) in recent decades has raised concern among scientists and forest managers about whether beetle outbreaks fuel more ecologically severe forest fires and…
Author(s): Brian J. Harvey, Daniel C. Donato, Monica G. Turner
Year Published:

More frequent fire activity associated with climate warming is expected to increase the extent of young forest stands in fire-prone landscapes, yet growth rates and biomass allocation patterns in young forests that regenerated naturally following…
Author(s): Paige E. Copenhaver, Daniel B. Tinker
Year Published:

Citizens, government officials, and natural resource managers are greatly concerned about potential impacts of the mountain pine beetle (MPB) epidemic on fire hazards and risk. Some mountain towns are surrounded by dead and dying trees. In the Rocky…
Author(s): Russell A. Parsons, William Matt Jolly, Paul G. Langowski, Megan Matonis, I. Sue Miller
Year Published:

The Future Forest Webinar Series facilitated dialogue between scientists and managers about the challenges and opportunities created by the mountain pine beetle (MPB) epidemic. The series consisted of six webinar facilitated by the USFS Rocky…
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Live fuel moisture content (LFMC), the ratio of water mass to dry mass contained in live plant material, is an important fuel property for determining fire danger and for modeling fire behavior. Remote sensing estimation of LFMC often relies on an…
Author(s): Yi Qi, Philip E. Dennison, William Matt Jolly, Rachel C. Kropp, Simon C. Brewer
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