Biogeochemical impacts of wildfires over four millennia in a Rocky Mountain subalpine watershed.

Taking time to consider the causes and consequences of large wildfires.

Over the past several decades we have witnessed record-setting wildfires across nearly every continent (1), with recent months as no exception. Widespread burning across western North America includes some of the largest wildfires on record in Washington State, with 2015 total area burned on track to exceed observations of the past two decades (2). Because wildfires have immediate and long-term...

Ecohydrology of an outbreak: mountain pine beetle impacts trees in drier landscape positions first

Vegetation pattern and landscape structure intersect to exert strong control over ecohydrological dynamics at the watershed scale. The hydrologic implications of vegetation disturbance (e.g. fire, disease) depend on the spatial pattern and form of environmental change. Here, we investigate this intersection at Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest (TCEF), Montana, with a focus on the mountain pi...

Resilience and Regime Change in a Southern Rocky Mountain Ecosystem During the Past 17000 Years

Paleoecological records indicate that subalpine forests in western North America have been resilient in response to multiple influences, including severe droughts, insect outbreaks, and widely varying fire regimes, over many millennia. One hypothesis for explaining this ecosystem resilience centers on the disruption of forest dynamics by frequent disturbance and climatic variability, and the re...

Evidence of Climate-Induced Range Contractions in Bull Trout Salvelinus confluentus in a Rocky Mountain Watershed, U.S.A

Many freshwater fish species are considered vulnerable to stream temperature warming associated with climate change because they are ectothermic, yet there are surprisingly few studies documenting changes in distributions. Streams and rivers in the U.S. Rocky Mountains have been warming for several decades. At the same time these systems have been experiencing an increase in the severity and fr...

Climatic teleconnections affecting subalpine fires 1 Running head: Climatic teleconnections affecting subalpine fires ENSO and PDO variability affect drought-induced fire occurrence in Rocky Mountain subalpine forests