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As forest carbon offset projects become more popular, professional foresters are providing their expertise to support them. But when several members of the Society of American Foresters questioned the science and assumptions used to design the…
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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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Public land management agencies have incorporated the concept of vulnerability into protocols for assessing and planning for climate change impacts on public forests and grasslands. However, resource managers and planners have little guidance for…
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Because it is an important regulator of terrestrial carbon cycling in North America, extensive research on natural and human disturbances has been carried out as part of the North American Carbon Program and the CarboNA project. A synthesis of…
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Rapid climate change has the potential to affect economic, social, and biological systems. A concern for species conservation is whether or not the rate of on-going climate change will exceed the rate at which species can adapt or move to suitable…
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Wildland fire regimes are primarily driven by climate/weather, fuels and people. All of these factors are dynamic and their variable interactions create a mosaic of fire regimes around the world. Climate change will have a substantial impact on…
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The state of knowledge about climatic effects on forests of the Northwest region was recently summarized in a peer reviewed assessment of these effects in Washington (Littell et al. 2009, 2010) and a white paper on climatic effects on Oregon…
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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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Increased wildfire activity (e.g. number of starts, area burned, fire behaviour) across the western United States in recent decades has heightened interest in resolving climate-fire relationships. Macroscale climate-fire relationships were examined…
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Globally documented widespread drought-induced forest mortality has important ramifications for plant community structure, ecosystem function, and the ecosystem services provided by forests. Yet the characteristics of drought seasonality, severity,…
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With projected climate change, we expect to face much more forest fire in the coming decades. Policy-makers are challenged not to categorize all fires as destructive to ecosystems simply because they have long flame lengths and kill most of the…
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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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Pervasive warming can lead to chronic stress on forest trees, which may contribute to mortality resulting from fire-caused injuries. Longitudinal analyses of forest plots from across the western US show that high pre-fire climatic water deficit was…
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Monthly temperature and precipitation data from 41 global climate models (GCMs) of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) were compared to observations for the 20th century, with a focus on the United States Pacific Northwest (PNW…
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While North American ecosystems vary widely in their ecology and natural historical fire regimes, they are unified in benefitting from prescribed fire when judiciously applied with the goal of maintaining and restoring native ecosystem composition,…
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Traditional knowledge is increasingly recognized as valuable for adaptation to climate change, bringing scientists and indigenous peoples together to collaborate and exchange knowledge. These partnerships can benefit both researchers and indigenous…
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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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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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Trends in streamflow timing and volume in the Pacific Northwest United States have been attributed to increased temperatures, because trends in precipitation at lower-elevation stations were negligible. We demonstrate that observed streamflow…
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Climatic change is anticipated to alter disturbance regimes for many ecosystems. Among the most important effects are changes in the frequency, size, and intensity of wildfires. Serotiny (long-term canopy storage and the heat-induced release of…
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