QUANTIFYING ECOSYSTEM RESILIENCE TO WILDFIRE IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES

Author

Marie Josephine Johnson

Year of Award

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Degree Name

Systems Ecology

Department or School/College

W.A. Franke College of Forestry and Conservation

Committee Chair

Ashley Ballantyne

Commitee Members

John Kimball, Jessica Mitchell, Jesse Johnson, Kelsey Jensco

Keywords

ecohydrology, ecological resilience, ecosystem resilience index, remote sensing, wildfire

Abstract

The broad theme of my dissertation is to move the study of ecological resilience from a qualitative or purely theoretical framework to a quantitative framework that identifies resilient and non-resilient ecosystems and landscapes by integrating the recovery of ecosystem function, structure, and composition. The three chapters of this dissertation follow a logical progression from a landscape scale, to a watershed scale, and finally to the regional scale of the western US. First, I develop and apply an integrated Ecosystem Resilience Index (ERI) to an individual fire. Second, I characterize postfire vegetation type conversion and associated changes in water and carbon fluxes in a coastal southern California watershed. Finally, I implement the locally validated ERI to more than 2,000 fires across the western US and examine how resilience varies across ecoclimatic regions. The three chapters in this dissertation contribute to a growing body of literature which addresses fire-driven ecological change in the western US and emphasize the ecological and practical importance of the spatial and temporal characterization of resilience.

Recommended Citation

Johnson, Marie Josephine, "QUANTIFYING ECOSYSTEM RESILIENCE TO WILDFIRE IN THE WESTERN UNITED STATES" (2025). Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers. 12595.
https://scholarworks.umt.edu/etd/12595