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Insects and Fire

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Beyond red crowns: complex changes in surface and crown fuels and their interactions 32 years following mountain pine beetle epidemics in south-central Oregon, USA

Year of Publication
2019
Publication Type
Journal Article
Background Mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins; MPB), a bark beetle native to western North America, has caused vast areas of tree mortality over the last several decades. The majority of this mortality has been in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Douglas ex Loudon) forests and has heightened concerns over the potential for extreme fire behavior across large landscapes.

The Influence of Western Spruce Budworm on Fire in Spruce-Fir Forests

Year of Publication
2017
Publication Type
Journal Article
Western spruce budworm (Choristoneura freemani Razowski; WSBW) is the most significant defoliator of coniferous trees in the western United States. Despite its important influence on Western forests, there are still gaps in our knowledge of WSBW’s impact on fire, and little research has been done on this relationship in high-elevation spruce-fir forests.

Spatial variability in tree regeneration after wildfire delays and dampens future bark beetle outbreaks

Year of Publication
2016
Publication Type
Journal Article
Climate change is altering the frequency and severity of forest disturbances such as wildfires and bark beetle outbreaks, thereby increasing the potential for sequential disturbances to interact. Interactions can amplify or dampen disturbances, yet the direction and magnitude of future disturbance interactions are difficult to anticipate because underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood.

Disturbance, tree mortality, and implications for contemporary regional forest change in the Pacific Northwest

Year of Publication
2016
Publication Type
Journal Article
Tree mortality is an important demographic process and primary driver of forest dynamics, yet there are relatively few plot-based studies that explicitly quantify mortality and compare the relative contribution of endogenous and exogenous disturbances at regional scales. We used repeated observations on 289,390 trees in 3673 1 ha plots on U.S.

Wildfire, climate, and perceptions in Northeast Oregon

Year of Publication
2016
Publication Type
Journal Article
Wildfire poses a rising threat in the western USA, fueled by synergies between historical fire suppression, changing land use, insects and disease, and shifts toward a drier, warmer climate. The rugged landscapes of northeast Oregon, with their historically forest- and resource-based economies, have been one of the areas affected.

NWFSC Research Brief #8: Cumulative disturbances on the landscape: Lessons from the Pole Creek fire, Oregon

Year of Publication
2016
Product Type
Research Brief
Previous research has focused on quantifying fuel loadings and using operational fire behavior models to understand changes in fire severity following MPB outbreaks. In this study however, researchers used direct field measurements taken from the 2012 Pole Creek Fire that burned in lodgepole pine forests in central Oregon’s Eastern Cascade Mountains, which had experienced a MPB epidemic 8-15 years prior to the fire. They examined the combined effects of MPB and fire disturbances on stand structure, and investigated the influence of previous MPB severity and fire weather on subsequent fire severity and cumulative disturbance severity.

Low-severity fire increases tree defense against bark beetle attacks

Year of Publication
2015
Publication Type
Journal Article
Induced defense is a common plant strategy in response to herbivory. Although abiotic damage, such as physical wounding, pruning, and heating, can induce plant defense, the effect of such damage by large-scale abiotic disturbances on induced defenses has not been explored and could have important consequences for plant survival facing future biotic disturbances.
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