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Fire-maintained pine (Pinus spp.) forests, characterized by a diverse herbaceous layer, sparse midstory layer, and a dominant pine overstory, once covered approximately 30 million ha in the southeastern United States. Fire suppression, landscape…
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Fire creates challenges and opportunities for wildlife through rapid destruction, modification and creation of habitat. Fire has spatially variable effects on landscapes; however, for species that benefit from the ephemeral resource patches created…
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Disturbance is a fundamental ecological process and driver of population dynamics. Ecologists seek to understand the effects of disturbance on ecological systems and to use disturbance to modify habitats degraded by anthropogenic change. Demographic…
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Background: Fuel reduction treatments have been widely implemented across the western US in recent decades for both fire protection and restoration. Although research has demonstrated that combined thinning and burning effectively reduces crown fire…
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Rodent populations respond quickly to changes in habitat structure and composition resulting from disturbances such as wildfires. Rodents may recolonise burnt areas from individuals that survived the wildfire in ‘internal refuges’ or from the…
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Interactions between fire and nonnative, annual plant species (that is, “the grass/fire cycle”) represent one of the greatest threats to sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems and associated wildlife, including the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus…
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Throughout much of the 20th century, the heights of young quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) in Yellowstone National Park’s northern ungulate winter range were suppressed due to intensive herbivory by Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus elaphus). However,…
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Understanding drivers of vegetation structure has direct implications for wildlife conservation and livestock management, but the relative importance of multiple disturbances interacting within the same system to shape vegetation structure remains…
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The 2010 Church’s Park Fire burned beetle-killed lodgepole pine stands in Colorado, including recently salvage-logged areas, creating a fortuitous opportunity to compare the effects of salvage logging, wildfire and the combination of logging…
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The Clark’s nutcracker has a mutualistic relationship with the whitebark pine, acting as the tree’s main seed dispersal mechanism.
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Understanding the impacts of mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) on fire behavior is important from both an ecological and land management viewpoint. However, numerous uncertainties exist in the linkages of MPB-caused tree…
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Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.), an ecologically important tree species in high-elevation ecosystems of western North America, is threatened by white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola Fischer) and increased pressure from mountain pine…
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The most recent mountain pine beetle (MPB) (Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreak in British Columbia (BC), which began in the late 1990s, killed ∼54% of the mature merchantable lodgepole pine and was expected to impact gross primary productivity (GPP…
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Silvicultural thinning treatments to restore whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) are widely used in subalpine forests throughout the western United States (US) and Canada. The objectives of these treatments are to (1) improve the condition of…
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Community-level climate change indicators have been proposed to appraise the impact of global warming on community composition. However, non-climate factors may also critically influence species distribution and biological community assembly. The…
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The severity of lodgepole pine mortality from mountain pine beetle outbreaks varies with host tree diameter, density, and other structural characteristics, influencing subcanopy conditions and tree regeneration. We measured density and leader growth…
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Drought stress is an important consideration for wildlife in arid and semi‐arid regions under climate change. Drought can impact plant and animal populations directly, through effects on their physiology, as well as indirectly through effects on…
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Droughts and insect outbreaks are primary disturbance processes linking climate change to tree mortality in western North America. Refugia from these disturbances—locations where impacts are less severe relative to the surrounding landscape—may be…
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The greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter GRSG) has been a focus of scientific investigation and management action for the past two decades. The 2015 U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listing determination of “not warranted” was in…
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Non‐linear and interacting effects of fire severity and time since fire may help explain how pyrodiversity promotes biodiversity in fire‐adapted systems. We built on previous research on avian responses to fire by investigating how complex effects…
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