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Recent large scale mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins, MPB) outbreaks have created concern regarding increased fuel loadings and exacerbated fire behavior and have prompted a desire to understand the effects of sequential…
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Increasingly, objectives for forests with moderate- or mixed-severity fire regimes are to restore successionally diverse landscapes that are resistant and resilient to current and future stressors. Maintaining native species and characteristic…
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Forest ecosystems can act as sinks of carbon and thus mitigate anthropogenic carbon emissions. When forests are actively managed, treatments can alter forests carbon dynamics, reducing their sink strength and switching them from sinks to sources of…
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Mixed conifer forests of western North America are challenging for fire management, as historical fire regimes were highly variable in severity, timing, and spatial extent. Complex fire histories combined with site factors and other disturbances,…
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Forests that historically burned in mixed-severity fire regimes prove difficult to manage, especially when they border homes and prized recreation areas. This management challenge was the focus of the Fuels Reduction and Restoration in Mixed-Conifer…
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There is widespread concern that fire exclusion has led to an unprecedented threat of uncharacteristically severe fires in ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex. Laws) and mixed-conifer forests of western North America. These extensive montane…
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The scientific basis for restoration of fire-excluded western larch/mixed-conifer forests is not as well developed as that for dry fire-frequent forests. We compared the effects of wildfire and restoration (combined thinning and prescribed fire) in…
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Determining appropriate actions to create or maintain landscapes resilient to climate change is challenging because of uncertainty associated with potential effects of climate change and their interactions with land management. We used a set of…
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The Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) was established over 20 years ago as an experiment in large landscape conservation. Initially, Y2Y emerged as a response to large scale habitat fragmentation by advancing ecological connectivity…
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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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Stand-level spatial pattern influences key aspects of resilience and ecosystem function such as disturbance behavior, regeneration, snow retention, and habitat quality in frequent-fire pine and mixed-conifer forests. Reference sites, from both pre-…
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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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Terrie Jain, Russell Graham, Andrew Hudak, and Bill Elliot with the United States Forest Service’s (USFS) Rocky Mountain Research Station, led a tour of fuels treatments in mostly moist mixed-conifer forests in the Priest River Experimental Forest (…
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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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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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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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Climate change, forests, fire, water, and fish: building resilient landscapes, streams, and managers
Fire will play an important role in shaping forest and stream ecosystems as the climate changes. Historic observations show increased dryness accompanying more widespread fire and forest die-off. These events punctuate gradual changes to ecosystems…
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Climate change is projected to profoundly influence vegetation patterns and community compositions, either directly through increased species mortality and shifts in species distributions or indirectly through disturbance dynamics such as increased…
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Since the introduction prior to 1915 of white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola) into the forests of western North America, many populations of native white pine species have seriously declined. Because western white pine (Pinus monticola) and…
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The introduced pathogen Cronartium ribicola, cause of white pine blister rust, has spread across much of western North America and established known infestations within all but one species of white pine endemic to western Canada and the United…
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