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Bark beetles can cause substantial mortality of trees that would otherwise survive fire injuries. Resin response of fire-injured northern Rocky Mountain ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Douglas ex P. Lawson & C. Lawson) and specific injuries that…
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Recent large-scale outbreaks of bark beetle infestations have affected millions of hectares of forest in western North America, covering an area similar in size to that impacted by fire. Bark beetles kill host trees in affected areas, thereby…
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Extensive beetle outbreaks across western North American forests have spurred debates about how to best protect communities from wildfire. Previous work has found that fuels in the wildland-urban interface and especially in the defensible space (40-…
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Quantifying the effects of mountain pine beetle (MPB)-caused tree mortality on potential crown fire hazard has been challenging partly because of limitations in current operational fire behavior models. Such models are not capable of accounting for…
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Declining forest health attributed to associations between extensive bark beetle-caused tree mortality, accumulations of hazardous fuels, wildfire, and climate change have catalyzed changes in forest health and wildfire protection policies of land…
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Very little is known about how foliar moisture and chemistry change after a mountain pine beetle attack and even less is known about how these intrinsic foliar characteristics alter foliage ignitability. Here, we examine the fuel characteristics and…
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Logistic regression models used to predict tree mortality are critical to post-fire management, planning prescribed burns and understanding disturbance ecology. We review literature concerning post-fire mortality prediction using logistic regression…
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Bowman et al. (Journal of Biogeography, 2011, 38, 2223–2236) attempt a synthesis of the current status of study into human use of fire as an ecosystem management tool and provide a framework for guiding research on the human dimensions of global…
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Climate change models for the northern Rocky Mountains predict changes in temperature and water availability that in turn will alter vegetation. Changes include timing of plant life-history events, or phenology, such as green-up, flowering and…
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Forest ecosystem dynamics emerges from nonlinear interactions between adaptive biotic agents (i.e., individual trees) and their relationship with a spatially and temporally heterogeneous abiotic environment. Understanding and predicting the dynamics…
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Evaluating the risks of wildfire relative to the valuable resources found in any managed landscape requires an interdisciplinary approach. Researchers at the Rocky Mountain Research Station and Western Wildland Threat Assessment Center developed…
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Aim: Wildfire is often considered more severe now than historically in dry forests of the western United States. Tree-ring reconstructions, which suggest that historical dry forests were park-like with large, old trees maintained by low-severity…
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Comment 1 - Simard et al. (2011) have produced a comprehensive data set and analysis concerning mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae)-caused mortality and associated crown fire feedbacks in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta)-dominated…
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Millions of trees killed by bark beetles in western North America have raised concerns about subsequent wildfire, but studies have reported a range of conclusions, often seemingly contradictory, about effects on fuels and wildfire. In this study, we…
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Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is a fundamental component of alpine and subalpine habitats in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The magnitude of current white pine blister rust (WPBR) infection caused by the pathogen Cronartium ribicola and…
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Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis), an important component of western high-elevation forests, has been declining in both the United States and Canada since the early Twentieth Century from the combined effects of mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus…
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This report is a scientific assessment of the current condition and likely future condition of forest resources in the United States relative to climatic variability and change. It serves as the U.S. Forest Service forest sector technical report for…
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Cheatgrass and its cousin, red brome, are exotic annual grasses that have invaded and altered ecosystem dynamics in more than 41 million acres of desert shrublands between the Rockies and the Cascade-Sierra chain. A fungus naturally associated with…
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The invasive annual grass downy brome is the most ubiquitous weed in sagebrush systems of western North America. The center of invasion has largely been the Great Basin region, but there is an increasing abundance and distribution in the Rocky…
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Bark beetle outbreaks and wildfire are important disturbances in conifer ecosystems, yet their interactions are not well understood. We evaluated whether fire injury increased susceptibility of lodgepole pines (Pinus contorta) to mountain pine…
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