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Investigators | Department | Objectives | Approach Keywords | Progress Reports | Impact Statements | Publications | |
Project * COL00500 | |
| Title | Imagining landscapes of the future: predicting the impacts of climate change, insect outbreaks, and fire on Colorado forests |
| Investigator(s) | Rocca, ME; Romme, WH; |
| Department | Forest, Rangeland, & Watershed Sciences |
| Objectives | The overall goal of this research is to forecast the future of two valued Colorado ecosystems, pinyon-juniper woodlands and lodgepole pine forests, in 50-100 years. We will investigate how forest structure and composition will respond to combinations of climate-induced stresses brought by insect epidemics and changing fire regimes. To meet this goal, we identify three objectives: 1)Characterize landscape patterns and the diversity of forest/woodland stand structures, in both treated and untreated stands, in four representative landscapes that have been affected by recent bark beetle outbreaks, both immediately (1-2 years) and (4-8) years post-mortality. 2)Evaluate the interactions between insect-induced tree mortality events and wildfire behavior by: a) Simulating fire behavior using custom fuel models for insect-killed forest stands and landscapes b) building and analyzing a regional GIS database of climate, tree mortality, and wildland fire information for the last ten years in Colorado 3)Building on the results from objectives 1 and 2, and utilizing forest simulation models, predict forest and landscape changes under a range of future climate scenarios. Use these predictions to forecast what Colorado's pinyon-juniper and lodgepole pine forests may look like, in terms of landscape and stand structure, 50 and 100 years from now. |
| Approach | We have identified four study sites for concentrated study on stand mortality and forest dynamics: Mesa Verde National Park (pinyon-juniper), Uncompahgre Plateau (pinyon-juniper), Eastern Grand county (lodgepole), Eastern Jackson county (lodgepole). Our field protocol is designed to describe forest structure at the stand-scale and quantify its variability across the landscape. For each of our study sites, we will sample areas with low, intermediate, and high levels of tree mortality. In quadrats along transects, we will record slope, aspect, canopy density, and canopy cover. For each tree in the section (including seedlings and saplings), species, status (dead/alive), estimated year and cause of death, basal trunk diameter, crown height and width, and average crown base height will be measured. We will analyze relationships between site factors such as management history, stand composition, stand structure, and site conditions, and tree mortality. We will apply custom fuel models for beetle-killed stands in lodgepole pine and pinyon woodlands,which currently under development in related studies, to assess stand- and landscape-scale fire behavior under varying levels of beetle-induced mortality. The FlamMap software package (Finney 2006) accepts as inputs basic weather, fuel moisture, and GIS raster grids for fuels and topography, and calculates potential fire behavior for each cell on the landscape . The Minimum Travel Time tool within FlamMap allows fire spread to be simulated through landscapes without the detailed weather and parameter inputs required by more complex fire spread packages (eg Farsite). We will use FlamMap simulations to compare fire behavior through landscapes differing in the severity of beetle impact and in the arrangement insect-killed stands. The effects of post-treatment management activities on fire behavior will also be explored. To examine the interaction between recent climate changes and fire occurrence and severity across Colorado, we propose to build a regional GIS database of climate, tree mortality, and wildland fire information. Our database development will be greatly facilitated by the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) project, which provides fire history records, fire severity raster grids, maps of burn perimeters, and Landsat remote imagery. To create maps of tree mortality, we will utilize USFS Forest Health Protection (FHP) program aerial survey data. We will also explore the ability of the MTBS Landsat imagery to detect forest stands affected by beetle mortality and, should it prove effective, use it to classify mortality in landscapes across the region. Using spatial overlays, we will ask a) whether fires are more likely to ignite, b) whether fires tend to be more severe, and c) whether fires get significantly larger in extent in areas with appreciable pine mortality. After improving our understanding of the complex interactions between climate change, fire, and woodland community structure, we will parameterize a landscape simulation model to predict future plant community structure and composition in years 2050 and 2100. |
| Keywords | bark beetles, fire regimes, lodgepole pine, pinyon pine, mountain pine beetle, pinyon ips, climate change, forest fuels, fire behavior, stand visualization, simulation modeling |
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