Modeled interactions of mountain pine beetle and wildland fire under future climate and management scenarios for three western US landscapes

Author:

Keane Robert E.,Bentz Barbara,Holsinger Lisa M.,Saab Victoria A.,Loehman Rachel

Abstract

Abstract Background Mountain pine beetle (MPB) is a native disturbance agent across most pine forests in the western US. Climate changes will directly and indirectly impact frequencies and severities of MPB outbreaks, which can then alter fuel characteristics and wildland fire dynamics via changes in stand structure and composition. To investigate the importance of MPB to past and future landscape dynamics, we used the mechanistic, spatially explicit ecosystem process model FireBGCv2 to quantify interactions among climate, MPB, wildfire, fire suppression, and fuel management under historical and projected future climates for three western US landscapes. We compared simulated FireBGCv2 output from three MPB modules (none, simple empirical, and complex mechanistic) using three focus variables and six exploratory variables to evaluate the importance of MPB to landscape dynamics. Results We found that inclusion of MPB (empirical or mechanistic) in the simulations significantly changed past and future landscape dynamics and that the mechanistic MPB module had more cross-scale interactions that increased variability, and perhaps realism, of simulation results. We also evaluated impacts of fire and fuel management on MPB dynamics and found that fire suppression influenced fuel loadings more than MPB disturbance, but at a landscape scale, most fuel treatment programs did little to change fuel loadings, MPB dynamics, and burned area, except under high fire suppression. Conclusions Synergistic interactions of climate, MPB, and wildfire catalyzed landscape-scale changes in vegetation distributions, fuels, and fire regimes in FireBGCv2 simulations. Models that simulate climate change on pine-dominated landscapes may be improved by including mechanistic MPB simulations to account for potentially important ecological interactions.

Publisher

Springer Science and Business Media LLC

Subject

Environmental Science (miscellaneous),Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics,Forestry

Cited by 4 articles. 订阅此论文施引文献 订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献

同舟云学术

1.学者识别学者识别

2.学术分析学术分析

3.人才评估人才评估

"同舟云学术"是以全球学者为主线,采集、加工和组织学术论文而形成的新型学术文献查询和分析系统,可以对全球学者进行文献检索和人才价值评估。用户可以通过关注某些学科领域的顶尖人物而持续追踪该领域的学科进展和研究前沿。经过近期的数据扩容,当前同舟云学术共收录了国内外主流学术期刊6万余种,收集的期刊论文及会议论文总量共计约1.5亿篇,并以每天添加12000余篇中外论文的速度递增。我们也可以为用户提供个性化、定制化的学者数据。欢迎来电咨询!咨询电话:010-8811{复制后删除}0370

www.globalauthorid.com

TOP

Copyright © 2019-2024 北京同舟云网络信息技术有限公司
京公网安备11010802033243号  京ICP备18003416号-3