Presentation Type
Oral Presentation
Category
STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics)
Abstract/Artist Statement
Fire and other climate driven disturbances are shaping the future of our forests. Given the vital ecosystem services provided by forests, it is crucial that we manage forests for their continued existence under changing climate conditions. This requires the immediate investigation of forest resilience, the ability of an ecosystem to withstand a disturbance by regaining its function, structure, and composition before a threshold is crossed and an ecosystem transitions to a new state. It has been widely recognized in ecology that resilience should be the primary goal of forest restoration and management, however, few studies have been designed to comprehensively examine forest resilience to wildfire across broad ecoregions. The objective of this research is to gain a comprehensive understanding of forest resilience at different spatial scales across the western US. To achieve this goal, we have developed a way to combine multiple metrics of ecosystem recovery into a forest ecosystem resilience framework. We have begun our work by characterizing the recovery of ecosystem functioning of a 11,400 acre forest in northwestern Montana, 15 years postfire. We will continue this work by using several different remote sensing platforms available to examine the functional, structural and compositional recovery of forest ecosystems following wildfire. This methodology will be expanded to forests across the western US to help identify predictors of resilience and inform management practices.
Mentor Name
Ashley Ballantyne
Forest resilience to fire in the western US: a test case for using satellite metrics to assess spatial and temporal patterns of forest recovery
Fire and other climate driven disturbances are shaping the future of our forests. Given the vital ecosystem services provided by forests, it is crucial that we manage forests for their continued existence under changing climate conditions. This requires the immediate investigation of forest resilience, the ability of an ecosystem to withstand a disturbance by regaining its function, structure, and composition before a threshold is crossed and an ecosystem transitions to a new state. It has been widely recognized in ecology that resilience should be the primary goal of forest restoration and management, however, few studies have been designed to comprehensively examine forest resilience to wildfire across broad ecoregions. The objective of this research is to gain a comprehensive understanding of forest resilience at different spatial scales across the western US. To achieve this goal, we have developed a way to combine multiple metrics of ecosystem recovery into a forest ecosystem resilience framework. We have begun our work by characterizing the recovery of ecosystem functioning of a 11,400 acre forest in northwestern Montana, 15 years postfire. We will continue this work by using several different remote sensing platforms available to examine the functional, structural and compositional recovery of forest ecosystems following wildfire. This methodology will be expanded to forests across the western US to help identify predictors of resilience and inform management practices.