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fire patterns on a landscapeClimate influences the severity, frequency and magnitude of forest disturbances. Disturbances, in turn, affect the composition, structure and processes that shape forest ecosystems. Climate change is expected to impact forest ecosystems in the coming decades, in large part through effects on abiotic (fire, drought, wind, snow and ice) and biotic (insects, pathogens and human induced) disturbances. Warming climates have been documented to alter interactions among disturbance regimes, with highly visible and rapidly occurring changes in landscape composition and structure. Complex interactions among climate, disturbance and vegetation may lead to the creation of novel landscapes with no historical analog.

The resources listed here are some of the most recent and applicable on the potential effects of climate on disturbance regimes and how they might interact with each other to enhance or dampen effects of climate on forests in the Northern Rockies.

This hot topic was developed in partnership with Montana State University's Institute on the Environment.

Recorded Webinars

Research Briefs

Management Documents

Publications

2023

Making choices: prioritising the protection of biodiversity in wildfires
John C. Z. Woinarski et al.

2022

Fire ecology for the 21st century: conserving biodiversity in the age of megafire
Dale G. Nimmo et al.

2021

Tree-planting: a double-edged sword to fight climate change in an era of megafires
Virgilio Hermoso et al.

2018

Effects of climate change on ecological disturbance in the Northern Rockies (Chapter 7)
Rachel A. Loehman et al.

2017

Adapt to more wildfire in western North American forests as climate changes
Tania L. Schoennagel et al.
A review and classification of interactions between forest disturbance from wind and fire
Jeffery B. Cannon et al.
Analog-based fire regime and vegetation shifts in mountainous regions of the western US
Sean A. Parks et al.
Characterizing interactions between fire and other disturbances and their impacts on tree mortality in western U.S. forests
Jeffrey M. Kane et al.
Fire Severity and Regeneration Strategy Influence Shrub Patch Size and Structure Following Disturbance
Jesse Minor et al.
Interactions of landscape disturbances and climate change dictate ecological pattern and process: spatial modeling of wildfire, insect, and disease dynamics under future climates
Rachel A. Loehman et al.

2016

How will climate change affect wildland fire severity in the western US?
Sean A. Parks et al.
Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests
John T. Abatzoglou et al.
Ecohydrological implications of drought for forests in the United States
James M. Vose et al.
Burn me twice, shame on who? Interactions between successive forest fires across a temperate mountain region
Brian J. Harvey et al.
Changing disturbance regimes, climate warming and forest resilience
Jill F. Johnstone et al.
The science of firescapes: achieving fire-resilient communities
Alistair M. S. Smith et al.
Management impacts on carbon dynamics in a Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forest
Sabina Dore et al.
Changing disturbance regimes, ecological memory, and forest resilience
Jill F. Johnstone et al.

2015

Tree mortality from drought, insects, and their interactions in a changing climate
William R.L. Anderegg et al.
Temperate forest health in an era of emerging megadisturbance
Constance I. Millar et al.
Temperate forest health in an era of emerging megadisturbance
Constance I. Millar et al.
Disturbance interactions: characterization, prediction, and the potential for cascading effects
Brian Buma
The ecological importance of mixed-severity fire: nature's phoenix

2014

A primer on global climate-change science
John T. Abatzoglou et al.
Disturbance legacies increase the resilience of forest ecosystem structure, composition, and functioning
Rupert Seidl et al.
Current climate and recent trends
Kelly T. Redmond et al.

2013

The impacts of climate change on ecosystem structure and function
Nancy B. Grimm et al.
When relationships estimated in the past cannot be used to predict the future: using mechanistic models to predict landscape ecological dynamics in a changing world
Eric J. Gustafson

2010

Disturbance and landscape dynamics in a changing world
Monica G. Turner
Climate change and bark beetles of the western United States and Canada: direct and indirect effects
Barbara J. Bentz et al.

2009

Global warming and stress complexes in forests of western North America
Donald McKenzie et al.
Modeling the effects of fire and climate change on carbon and nitrogen storage in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) stands
Erica A. H. Smithwick et al.
Learning the rhythm of the seasons in the face of global change: phenological research in the 21st century
Jeffrey T. Morrisette et al.

2005

Recent history of large-scale ecosystem disturbances in North America derived from the AVHRR satellite record
Christopher Potter et al.

2004

Fire-induced erosion and millennial-scale climate change in northern ponderosa pine forests
Jennifer L. Pierce et al.