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Project ID: 12-3-01-13

Year: 2012

Date Started: 09/01/2012

Ending Date:  05/31/2015

Title: Interactions Among Climate, Wildfire and Tree Regeneration at Lower Treeline in the Northern Rockies

Project Proposal Abstract: Forests of the U.S. Northern Rockies will likely become increasingly vulnerable to future changes in climate and wildfire. Bioclimatic vegetation models predict future contractions of tree species distributions in a warmer climate. However, the interactions among climate, fire, and vegetation change in structuring post-disturbance forests are poorly understood. Punctuated disturbance events, such as widespread, severe fires, may mediate climate in changing vegetation distributions by speeding the mortality of overstory trees. Where species are already moisture-limited, at lower treeline for example, increased evaporative demand under a warmer climate could result in a dramatic decrease in tree seedling recruitment, especially in severely burned areas. The proposed research directly addresses the JFSP topic area of climate change and fire by examining the role that large, and potentially more severe, wildfires play in altering spatial patterns of forest regeneration in a warming climate. This research will improve understanding of the ecological effects of climate change and fire and will quantify if and how burn severity may catalyze shifts in the location and composition of lower treeline under climate change. We propose to examine the relationships among climate, fire, and tree regeneration in Northern Rockies forests. We will sample across a gradient in effective moisture to understand how variability in climate manifests in changes to local microsite climatic conditions and whether these microclimate controls impact post-fire tree reestablishment at lower treeline. We hypothesize that widespread climate-driven wildfires will facilitate shifts in tree species distributions at lower treeline where post-fire climate and topography will largely determine moisture availability and limit post-fire recruitment of ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir. Our work will be conducted in lower treeline forests of Idaho and western Montana in fires that occurred during 1994, 2000, and 2007. We will collect data on seedling establishment using belt transects that are spatially stratified across burn severities and elevations. Understanding the interacting dynamics of disturbance and climate will help managers focus rehabilitation efforts following severe wildfires and improve predictions about future forest structure and fire regimes as vegetation changes in response to the compounding effects of climate and disturbance. These data will also inform regionally-specific predictions of climate change impacts on vegetation distributions and improve process-based dynamic vegetation models. The proposed work builds upon a larger project funded by a National Science Foundation Integrated Graduate Research and Education Traineeship focusing on the resilience of social and ecological systems in the Northern Rockies to changes in fire regimes, hydrology, and climate, a NSF-PIRE project focused on the climate and human impacts on fire regimes in the western U.S., and a NASA grant examining the long-term response of vegetation to extreme fire events. In addition to this interdisciplinary work, student collaborator Kerry Kemps dissertation research includes disciplinary research to understand what role climate and disturbance played in historical patterns of establishment in lower-treeline forests. Our results will be disseminated through field tours, informative flyers, webinars given through fire science delivery networks proposed for the Northern Rockies, teaching at the McCall Outdoor Science School, and a refereed journal publication.

Principal Investigator: Philip E. Higuera

Agency/Organization: University of Idaho

Branch or Dept: College of Natural Resources

Other Project Collaborators

Type	Name	Agency/Organization	Branch or Dept
Budget Contact	Sarah S. Martonick	University of Idaho	Office of Sponsored Programs
Grants and Agreements Contact	Sarah S. Martonick	University of Idaho	Office of Sponsored Programs
Lead Reviewer	Leda N. Kobziar	University of Florida	School of Forest Resources & Conservation
Student Investigator	Kerry B. Kemp	University of Idaho	College of Natural Resources

Project Locations

Consortium

Northern Rockies

Level	State	Agency	Unit
REGIONAL	Interior West	FS

Project Deliverables

There is no final report available for this project.
There are no deliverables available for this project.

Supporting Documents

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