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<div><font face="Lucida Grande">Thrive or fail: Examining forest
resilience in the face of fires</font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande">UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
PUBLIC RELEASE: 6-SEP-2016</font></div>
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<div><font face="Lucida Grande">Other studies by her research group
have shown that years of hot, dry climate immediately following fires
significantly impede forest recovery."</font></div>
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<div><font face="Lucida Grande">"This is a new normal. We have to
anticipate how things are going to change," says
Turner.</font></div>
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<div><font face="Lucida Grande">MADISON, Wis. -- In 1988, fires
consumed more than a million acres of Yellowstone National Park and
its surrounding lands. But for the past three decades, Yellowstone's
forests -- resilient ecosystems composed of species adapted to
periodic severe fire -- have embarked on their recovery.</font></div>
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However, this year, several new fires -- including the Maple, Buffalo
and Berry fires -- are burning through those young pine forests.
Typically, a century or more separates severe wildfires there, says
Monica Turner, professor of zoology at the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, so how the forest will recover from more fire just
28 years later is unknown.</font></div>
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Turner paired with Jill Johnstone, professor of biology at the
University of Saskatchewan, to outline a framework this month in the
journal<i><b> Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment</b></i> to help
scientists better test, understand and predict when forests are
resilient enough to recover or when a combination of conditions could
tip the scales, drastically altering forest landscapes.</font></div>
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"This is a new normal. We have to anticipate how things are going
to change," says Turner.</font></div>
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Turner and Johnstone, who studies the boreal forests of Alaska and
Canada, view the framework as a tool for ecologists to better
accomplish this because how the forests of the future will be affected
by traditional disturbances like fire in the context of changing
conditions -- from a warmer, drier climate to destruction by invasive
species -- remains a challenge to predict.</font></div>
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"We have to look at disturbances today and try to understand
their effects because we can't afford to wait 30, 40, 50 years to see
what's going to happen," says Turner, who has studied the forests
of Yellowstone since the last of the 1988 flames fizzled. She's been
fascinated with their recovery and how they have also been resilient
to outbreaks of mountain pine beetles. However, she has also learned
that warming climate and drought may be changing the rules of the
game. "Having all the answers will take decades and we want to
find creative ways to get answers sooner."</font></div>
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Especially since hot and dry conditions have fueled wildfires in
populous portions of California this summer, destroying homes and
forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate. And some of the
largest fires of the season continue to burn in Idaho and
Washington.</font></div>
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Johnstone and Turner, co-lead authors of the framework, assembled a
team of leading forest ecologists -- including three UW-Madison alumni
-- to develop it. In their analysis, they highlight the notion of
ecological memory, which refers to the evolved adaptations of forests
to fire, such as the presence of pine cones (serotinous cones) that
only open in response to fire (what the researchers call
"information legacies"), to what is left after disturbances,
like the dead trees that remain standing after a blaze ("material
legacies").</font></div>
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Ecological memory confers forests with resilience to fire by providing
them the building blocks for recovery, even under a wide range of
conditions.</font></div>
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By definition, disturbances are almost always unpredictable but
"what we and many others want to know is whether there are
situations where forests may be stressed beyond their ability to be
resilient, where a double or triple whammy will have a big effect,"
says Turner.</font></div>
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For instance, she will continue to study Yellowstone in the wake of
this year's fires, to see if burned forest areas can recover after a
growth period of just 28 years. Other studies by her research group
have shown that years of hot, dry climate immediately following fires
significantly impede forest recovery.</font></div>
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<div><font face="Lucida Grande">Johnstone has shown that areas of
boreal forest once occupied by white spruce have been invaded by
flammable black spruce, increasing fire frequency in areas
unaccustomed to flames, while some severely burned areas have been
repopulated by less flammable species, reducing fires
there.</font></div>
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In Minnesota, severe wind storms that knock serotinous cones to the
forest floor can prevent forests from recovering if a fire follows.
And in New Zealand, some forests are seeing fires for the first time
due to human impact; the species there have not had the opportunity or
time to adapt to fire.</font></div>
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"If the new normal is outside of the conditions they are adapted
to, forests may no longer be resilient," says Turner, because it
results in a mismatch between ecological memory and the disturbances
forests endure.</font></div>
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This mismatch can lead to what Turner and her co-authors dub
"resilience debt," which becomes apparent only after a
disturbance occurs. Ecological processes happen slowly, so the impact
of disturbances, though they happen fast, could take years or even
decades to manifest</font></div>
<div><font face="Lucida Grande">.<br>
By examining different mechanisms that have diminished the ability of
forests to recover -- from a change in disturbance frequency, size or
severity to changing climate -- Turner and her colleagues were able to
define particular sets of conditions that may allow ecologists to
predict when forests will be resilient or when they will be
fundamentally altered.</font></div>
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"I am excited because we have been working out these ideas for
the last five years or so and it's nice to have a framework to test a
lot of these ideas for how generalizable they are," Turner says.
"Ultimately, it's the data that will tell us."</font></div>
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Thanks to support from the federal Joint Fire Science Program, Turner
has new funding to test some of these ideas about resilience in the
Rocky Mountains.</font></div>
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She and colleagues at UW-Madison, including Jack Williams, director of
the Center for Climatic Research and a professor of geography; Stephen
Carpenter, director of the Center for Limnology and professor of
zoology; Anthony Ives, professor of zoology; and Chris Kucharik,
professor of agronomy at the Nelson Institute for Environmental
Studies, are also leading a new effort with support from the UW2020:
WARF Discovery Initiative to focus on abrupt changes in ecological
systems of the U.S. They refer to their project as ACES.</font></div>
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"It's not only western forests where these things matter, where
disturbances and changing environments shape regional landscapes,"
Turner adds. "With ACES, we want to assess the possibility of
fast changes in forests, lakes and agriculture to help us anticipate
the effects on wildlife, carbon storage, water quality, and future
timber resources. These things matter a lot."</font></div>
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"The biosphere -- this thin film of air and water and soil and
life no deeper than ten miles, or one four-hundredth of the earth's
radius -- is now the setting of the uncertain history of
man."</font></div>
<div><font size="-1" color="#000000"><br>
"Man must learn to see himself in his true place and proportion in
the biosphere."</font></div>
<div><font size="-1" color="#000000"><br>
The Editors,<i> Scientific American</i>. Foreword to<i> The
Biosphere</i>, the book version of<i> Scientific American's</i>
September 1970 special issue on The Biosphere.</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1"
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>
</b>"The growth in CO2 emissions closely follows the growth in Gross
Domestic Product (GDP) corrected for improvements in energy
efficiency."</font></div>
<div><font face="Geneva" size="-1" color="#000000"><br>
P. Friedlingstein, et al. "Update on CO2 emissions."<br>
<i>Nature Geoscience.</i> Published online: 21 November 2010<br>
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<div><font face="Bookman Old Style" color="#000000">"Changes in
world GDP (WGDP) have a significant effect on CO2 concentrations, so
that years of above-trend WGDP are years of greater rise of CO2
concentrations."<br>
<br>
Granados et al. Climate change and the world economy: short-run
determinants of atmospheric CO2.<i> Environmental science &
policy</i> 21 (2012) 50-62</font></div>
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