Modeling Effects of Climate Change and Fire Management on Western White Pine (Pinus monticola) in the Northern Rocky Mountains, USA

Abstract

Climate change is projected to profoundly influence vegetation patterns and community compositions, either directly through increased species mortality and shifts in species distributions or indirectly through disturbance dynamics such as increased wildfire activity and extent, shifting fire regimes, and pathogenesis. Mountainous landscapes have been shown to be particularly sensitive to climate changes and are likely to experience significant impacts under predicted future climate regimes. Western white pine (Pinus monticola), a five-needle pine species that forms the most diverse of the white pine forest cover types in the western United States, is vulnerable to an interacting suite of threats that includes climate change, fire suppression, white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola), and mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) that have already caused major changes in species distribution and abundance. We used the mechanistic simulation model FireBGCv2 to simulate effects of climate change and fire management on western white pines in a mountainous watershed in Glacier National Park, Montana, USA. Our results suggest that warming temperatures favor increased abundance of western white pine over existing climax and shade tolerant species in the study area, mainly because warmer conditions potentiate fire dynamics, including increased wildfire frequency and extent, which facilitates regeneration. Suppression of wildfires reduced the area dominated by western white pine, but fire suppression was less effective at limiting burned area extent OPEN ACCESSForests 2011, 2 833 and fire frequency in a warmer and drier climate. Wildfires created canopy gaps that allowed for western white pine regeneration at a high enough rate to escape local extirpation from white pine blister rust. Western white pine appears to be a resilient species even under fairly extreme warming trajectories and shifting fire regimes, and may provide a hedge against vegetation community shifts away from forest types and toward grass and shrublands.

Climate change impacts and adaptation in forest management: a review

“…For example, this interaction will potentially determine the vulnerability of western white pine (Pinus monticola) ecosystems in Montana in the USA. Loehman et al (2011) found that warmer temperatures will favour western white pine over existing climax and shade tolerant species, mainly because warmer conditions will lead to increased frequency and extent of wildfires that facilitates regeneration of this species.…”

Potential influence of wildfire in modulating climate-induced forest redistribution in a central Rocky Mountain landscape

“…Long-standing concepts of species niche space (Hutchinson 1957;Pearson and Dawson 2003) have led to the development of empirically defined bioclimatic envelope models and closely related species distribution models (hereafter, collectively "climate niche models") that can estimate potential plant geographic distributions under both current and future climates (Iverson and Prasad 1998;Bakkenes et al 2002;Bachelet et al 2005;Lenihan et al 2008;Rehfeldt et al 2012). However, the degree to which plant species can actually realize geographic shifts into favorable climate space is complicated by limitations of dispersal Franklin 2013;Snell 2014), environmental stressors that result in survival thresholds not apparent in current species distributions (McKenzie et al 2009), competition in novel climate space Rehfeldt et al 2012), and disturbance patterns, which may also be altered by global climate change (Bachelet et al 2005;Moser et al 2010;Johnstone et al 2010;Littell et al 2010;Loehman et al 2010).…”

Post-Fire Seedling Recruitment and Morpho-Ecophysiological Responses to Induced Drought and Salvage Logging in Pinus halepensis Mill. Stands

“…According to IPCC projections for the Mediterranean Basin, climate change will increase dryness and aridity due to warmer temperatures and reduced precipitation, mainly in summer [1,2] which will induce changes in fire regimes [3] and increase the distribution of resilient species [4]. Regional models for southeast (SE) Spain have predicted reduced rainfall and rises in temperature of about 20% and 4.5 °C, respectively, by the year 2100 [5].…”