A5009335081- Fire effects on ecosystems
- Rangeland and Wildlife Management
- Ecology and Vegetation Dynamics Studies
- Wildlife Ecology and Conservation
- Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
- Species Distribution and Climate Change
- Landslides and related hazards
- Land Use and Ecosystem Services
- Forest Management and Policy
- Forest ecology and management
- Rangeland Management and Livestock Ecology
- Wildlife-Road Interactions and Conservation
- Plant Ecology and Soil Science
- Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
- Ecology and biodiversity studies
- Hydrology and Sediment Transport Processes
- Soil erosion and sediment transport
- Forest Ecology and Biodiversity Studies
- Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration
- Botany and Plant Ecology Studies
Washington Department of Natural Resources
2014-2024
University of Washington
2022-2024
Oregon State University
2004-2008
Increasing fire severity and warmer, drier postfire conditions are making forests in the western United States (West) vulnerable to ecological transformation. Yet, relative importance of interactions between these drivers forest change remain unresolved, particularly over upcoming decades. Here, we assess how interactive impacts changing climate wildfire activity influenced conifer regeneration after 334 wildfires, using a dataset from 10,230 field plots. Our findings highlight declining...
Abstract Wildfires devastated communities in Oregon and Washington September 2020, burning almost as much forest west of the Cascade Mountain crest (“the westside”) 2 weeks (~340,000 ha) previous five decades (~406,00 ha). Unlike dry forests interior western United States, temperate rain Pacific Northwest have experienced limited recent fire activity, debates surrounding what drove 2020 fires, management strategies to adapt similar future events, necessitate a scientific evaluation fires. We...
Abstract Building resilience to natural disturbances is a key managing forests for adaptation climate change. To date, most guidance has focused on recommendations frequent‐fire forests, leaving few published guidelines that naturally experience infrequent, stand‐replacing wildfires. Because such are inherently resilient disturbances, and burn severity mosaics largely indifferent manipulations of stand structure (i.e., weather‐driven, rather than fuel‐driven fire regimes), we posit pre‐fire...
Determining appropriate actions to create or maintain landscapes resilient climate change is challenging because of uncertainty associated with potential effects and their interactions land management. We used a set climate-informed state-and-transition models explore the management natural disturbances on vegetation composition structure under different future climates. Models were run for dry forests central Oregon fire suppression scenario (i.e., no other than continued wildfires) an...
Future vegetation shifts under changing climate are uncertain for forests with infrequent stand-replacing disturbance regimes. These high-inertia may have long persistence even change because disturbance-free periods can span centuries, broad-scale regeneration opportunities fewer relative to frequent-fire systems, and mature tree species long-lived relatively high tolerance sub-optimal growing conditions. Here, we used a combination of empirical process-based modeling approaches examine...
Abstract The natural range of variation (NRV) is an important reference for ecosystem management, but has been scarcely quantified forest landscapes driven by infrequent, severe disturbances. Extreme events such as large, stand‐replacing wildfires at multi‐century intervals are typical these regimes; however, data on their characteristics inherently scarce, and, land commonly considered too large and unpredictable to integrate into planning efforts (the proverbial “Black Swan”). Here, we...
Abstract As wildfire activity increases and fire‐size distributions potentially shift in many forested regions worldwide, anticipating the spatial patterns of burn severity expected with future fire is critical for ecological understanding informing management policy. Because are influenced by a complex mixture drivers, they remain difficult to predict any given burned landscape. At broader extents, however, scaling relationships relating high‐severity patch size shape overall size, when...
Maintaining dense forest habitats for the threatened northern spotted owl (NSO) has proven challenging in seasonally dry, fire-dependent landscapes where low-density conditions were historically dominant and are generally more climate- disturbance-resilient. To better inform dual, sometimes-conflicting objectives of species conservation resilience, we developed an approach to evaluate NSO habitat sustainability by: (1) quantifying structure high suitability (HSH) associated with using two...
Instream wood plays an important role in stream morphology and creation of fish habitat conifer forests throughout the temperate zone. In some regions, such as US Pacific Northwest, many streams currently have reduced amounts instream due to past management activities (timber harvest, removal, etc.). These reductions exist against a backdrop naturally dynamic distributions wood, which likely fluctuate over time based part on stage development (disturbance succession) adjacent riparian...
Maintaining dense forest habitats for the threatened northern spotted owl (NSO) has proved challenging in seasonally dry, fire-dependent landscapes where low-density conditions were historically dominant and are generally more climate- disturbance-resilient. To better inform dual, sometimes-conflicting objectives of species conservation resilience, we developed an approach to evaluate NSO habitat sustainability by: (1) quantifying structure high suitability (HSH) associated with using two...