Sponsor
Funding for this research was provided from the National Science Foundation (NSF EAR-1738104). A. Holz was additionally supported by NSF Award #1832483.
Published In
Ecosphere
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
9-2020
Subjects
Wildfires -- Cascade Range, Wildfires -- Pacific Northwest, Wildfires -- Environmental aspects, Forest fires -- Environmental aspects, Forest restoration
Abstract
Increasing forest fuel aridity with climate change may be expanding mid-to-high-elevation forests’ vulnerability to large, severe, and frequent wildfire. Long-lasting changes in forests’ structure and composition may occur if dominant tree species are poorly adapted to shifting wildfire patterns. We hypothesized that altered fire activity may lower existing forest resilience and disrupt the recovery of upper-montane and subalpine conifer forest types. We empirically tested this hypothesis by quantifying post-fire forest structure and conifer tree regeneration after spatially large, severe, and rapidly repeated wildfires (
Rights
© 2020 The Authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
DOI
10.1002/ecs2.3247
Persistent Identifier
https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/34160
Citation Details
Busby, S. U., Moffett, K. B., & Holz, A. (2020). High‐severity and short‐interval wildfires limit forest recovery in the Central Cascade Range. Ecosphere, 11(9), e03247.
Description
Originally appeared in Ecosphere, vol. 11, issue 9, 2020. Published by the Ecological Society of America. May be accessed at https://doi.org/10.1002/ecs2.3247.