Mountain Pine Beetle-Induced Changes to Selected Lodgepole Pine Fuel Complexes within the Intermountain Region
By Wesley G. Page, Michael J. Jenkins. Forestry sciences, 2007
124 citations recorded by the source corpus.
The mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) is a forest insect that infests lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. var. latifolia Engelm.) forests in the Intermountain West. The often widespread mortality caused by the mountain pine beetle has been suggested to result in significant changes to stand structure, composition, and total fuel loading; however, little quantitative information that documents these changes is available. We examined mountain pine beetle–induced changes to ground, surface, and aerial fuels in lodgepole pine stands during current epidemics and 20 years after an epidemic. Results indicated that there were statistically significant increases in the amounts of fine surface fuels in recently infested stands, i.e., those stands ≤5 years past peak mortality. In the previously infested stands, there were large increases in the amounts of dead woody fuels in all but the smallest size classes, with a 7.8-fold increase in down woody fuels ≥7.62 cm in diameter. Live shrubs and the amount of subalpine fir (Abies lasiocarpa Nutt.) regeneration were also significantly greater in the postepidemic stands. The net result of epidemic mountain pine beetle activity was a substantial change in species composition and a highly altered fuels complex in which large dead woody fuels and live surface fuels dominate.
Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Insect Science
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/4e5f715658861a0e6da5fafe9c8c1e51a33e513b
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Citations in the corpus
- Interactions among the Mountain Pine Beetle, Fires, and Fuels (2014, methodology): “Page and Jenkins (2007a) found a 2.5- to 7.8-fold increase in coarse woody fuels in MPB-attacked lodgepole pine forests in Utah approximately 20 years after an epidemic.”
- Spruce Beetle Biology, Ecology and Management in the Rocky Mountains: An Addendum to Spruce Beetle in the Rockies (2014, unknown): “Engelmann spruce [4,12,13,108,109], lodgepole pine [110–112], whitebark pine [113,114], and Douglas-fir [115–117].”
- Stand characteristics and downed woody debris accumulations associated with a mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) outbreak in Colorado (2009, unknown): “Various studies have reported increases in understory vegetation after bark beetle outbreaks (Amman, 1977; McCambridge et al., 1982; Stone and Wolfe, 1996; McMillin and Allen, 2000; McMillin et al., 2003; Lynch et al., 2006; Page and Jenkins, 2007a).”