Skip to main content

Search by keywords, then use filters to narrow down results by type, year, topic, or ecosystem.

Displaying 21 - 40 of 636

Young, recently burned forests are increasingly widespread throughout western North America, but forest development after large wildfires is not fully understood, especially regarding effects of variable burn severity, environmental heterogeneity,…
Author(s): William H. Romme, Timothy G. Whitby, Daniel B. Tinker, Monica G. Turner
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:

Prescribed fire is applied widely as a management tool in North America to meet various objectives such as reducing fuel loads and fuel continuity, returning fire to an ecosystem, enhancing wildlife habitats, improving forage, preparing seedbeds,…
Author(s): William M. Block, L. Mike Conner, Paul A. Brewer, Paulette Ford, Jonathan Haufler, Andrea Litt, Ronald E. Masters, Laura R. Mitchell, Jane Park
Year Published:

Disturbance and succession have long been of interest in ecology, but how landscape patterns of ecosystem structure and function evolve following large disturbances is poorly understood. After nearly 25 years, lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var.…
Author(s): Monica G. Turner, Timothy G. Whitby, Daniel B. Tinker, William H. Romme
Year Published:

Escalating wildfire in subalpine forests with stand-replacing fire regimes is increasing the extent of early-seral forests throughout the western USA. Post-fire succession generates the fuel for future fires, but little is known about fuel loads and…
Author(s): Kellen N. Nelson, Monica G. Turner, William H. Romme, Daniel B. Tinker
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:

Quantifying the linkages between vegetation disturbance by fire and the changes in hydrologic processes leading to post-fire erosional response remains a challenge. We measured the influence of fire severity, defined as vegetation disturbance (using…
Author(s): Kevin D. Hyde, Kelsey Jencso, Andrew C. Wilcox, Scott W. Woods
Year Published:

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:

As large, high-severity forest fires increase and snowpacks become more vulnerable to climate change across the western USA, it is important to understand post-fire disturbance impacts on snow hydrology. Here, we examine, quantify, parameterize,…
Author(s): Kelly E. Gleason, Anne W. Nolin
Year Published:

Extensive outbreaks of bark beetles have killed trees across millions of hectares of forests and woodlands in western North America. These outbreaks have led to spirited scientific, public, and policy debates about consequential increases in fire…
Author(s): Dominik Kulakowski, Nathan Mietkiewicz
Year Published:

This reference presents general guidelines for planning, implementing, and evaluating whitebark pine conservation and management activities on lands administered by the Bureau of Land Management.
Author(s): Dana L. Perkins, Robert E. Means, Alexia C. Cochrane
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:

The prevailing paradigm in the western U.S. is that the increase in stand-replacing wildfires in historically frequent-fire dry forests is due to unnatural fuel loads that have resulted from management activities including fire suppression, logging…
Author(s): Elizabeth L. Kalies, Larissa L. Yocom Kent
Year Published:

Wildfires shape the distribution and structure of vegetation across the inland northwestern United States. However, fire activity is expected to increase given the current rate of climate change, with uncertain outcomes. A fire impact that has not…
Author(s): Arjan J. H. Meddens, Crystal A. Kolden, James A. Lutz
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Sarah Hart, Tania L. Schoennagel, Thomas T. Veblen, Teresa B. Chapman
Year Published:

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:

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 1992, the potential …
Author(s): William H. Romme, Monica G. Turner
Year Published:

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:

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…
Author(s): Chad M. Hoffman, Rodman Linn, Russell A. Parsons, Carolyn Hull Sieg, Judith Winterkamp
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: