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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…
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In the western United States, mountain pine beetles (MPBs) have killed pine trees across 71,000 km2 of forest since the mid-1990s, leading to widespread concern that abundant dead fuels may increase area burned and exacerbate fire behavior. Although…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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The implementation of US federal forest restoration programs on national forests is a complex process that requires balancing diverse socioecological goals with project economics. Despite both the large geographic scope and substantial investments…
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Patches of live, dead, and dying trees resulting from bark beetle-caused mortality alter spatial and temporal variability in the canopy and surface fuel complex through changes in the foliar moisture content of attacked trees and through the…
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Climate science and understanding how climate change may affect the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) have come a long way since our 1992 Yellowstone Science article (Romme and Turner 1992, based on Romme and Turner 1991). In…
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Understanding the rates, trajectories, and spatial variability in succession following severe wildfire is increasingly important for forest managers in western North America and critical for anticipating the resilience or vulnerability of…
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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…
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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…
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We demonstrated the utility of digital fire atlases by analyzing forest fire extent across cold, dry, and mesic forests, within and outside federally designated wilderness areas during three different fire management periods: 1900 to 1934, 1935 to…
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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…
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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…
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Wildland fire is an important natural process in many ecosystems. However, fire exclusion has reduced frequency of fire and area burned in many dry forest types, which may affect vegetation structure and composition, and potential fire behavior. In…
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Live foliar moisture content (LFMC) significantly influences wildland fire behaviour. However, characterising variations in LFMC is difficult because both foliar mass and dry mass can change throughout the season. Here we quantify the seasonal…
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Freshwater ecosystems are warming globally from the direct effects of climate change on air temperature and hydrology and the indirect effects on near-stream vegetation. In fire-prone landscapes, vegetative change may be especially rapid and cause…
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The degree to which recent bark beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreaks may influence fire severity and postfire tree regeneration is of heightened interest to resource managers throughout western North America, but empirical data on actual fire…
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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…
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