Post-fire salvage logging adds another set of environmental effects to recently burned areas, and previous studies have reported varying impacts on vegetation, soil disturbance, and sediment production with limited data on the underlying processes.
With increasing public demand for more intensive biomass utilization from forests, the concerns over adverse impacts on productivity by nutrient depletion are increasing. We remeasured the 1974 site of the Forest Residues Utilization Research and Development in northwestern Montana to investigate long-term impacts of intensive biomass utilization on aspects of site productivity.
Little research has focused on the economic impact associated with climate-change induced wildland fire on natural ecosystems and the goods and services they provide. We examine changes in wildland fire patterns based on the U.S.
The prospect of rapidly changing climates over the next century calls for methods to predict their effects on myriad, interactive ecosystem processes. Spatially explicit models that simulate ecosystem dynamics at fine (plant, stand) to coarse (regional, global) scales are indispensable tools for meeting this challenge under a variety of possible futures.
Climate change adaptation and mitigation require understanding of vegetation response to climate change. Using the MC2 dynamic global vegetation model (DGVM) we simulate vegetation for the Northwest United States using results from 20 different Climate Model Intercomparison Project Phase 5 (CMIP5) models downscaled using the MACA algorithm.
Western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis subsp. occidentalis) range expansion into sagebrush steppe ecosystems has affected both native wildlife and economic livelihoods across western North America. The potential listing of the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) under the U.S.
Wildfires will continue to reach people and property regardless of management effort in the landscape. House-based strategies are therefore required to complement the landscape strategies in order to reduce the extent of house loss.
Projected effects of climate change across many ecosystems globally include more frequent disturbance byfire and reduced plant growth due to warmer (and especially drier) conditions.
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.
Severe, decades-long "megadroughts" that hit the southwestern and midwestern United States over the past millennium may be just a preview of droughts to come in the next century as a result of climate change, new research suggests.