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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Three Centuries Of Synchronous Forest Defoliator Outbreaks In Western North America, Aquila Flower
Three Centuries Of Synchronous Forest Defoliator Outbreaks In Western North America, Aquila Flower
Environmental Studies Faculty and Staff Publications
Insect outbreaks often occur synchronously across large spatial scales, but the long-term temporal stability of the phenomenon and the mechanisms behind it are not well understood. In this study, I use a widespread lepidopteran defoliator native to western North America--the western spruce budworm--as a case study to explore patterns of and potential causes for synchronous population fluctuations. Analyses of synchrony are typically severely limited by the short historical records available for many species. To overcome this limitation, I compiled multi-century dendrochronological reconstructions of western spruce budworm outbreaks from across much of the species' range. This allowed me to analyze synchrony …
Western Spruce Budworm Outbreaks Did Not Increase Fire Risk Over The Last Three Centuries: A Dendrochronological Analysis Of Inter-Disturbance Synergism, Aquila Flower, Daniel Girard Gavin, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Russell A. Parsons, Gregory M. Cohn
Western Spruce Budworm Outbreaks Did Not Increase Fire Risk Over The Last Three Centuries: A Dendrochronological Analysis Of Inter-Disturbance Synergism, Aquila Flower, Daniel Girard Gavin, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Russell A. Parsons, Gregory M. Cohn
Environmental Studies Faculty and Staff Publications
Insect outbreaks are often assumed to increase the severity or probability of fire occurrence through increased fuel availability, while fires may in turn alter susceptibility of forests to subsequent insect outbreaks through changes in the spatial distribution of suitable host trees. However, little is actually known about the potential synergisms between these natural disturbances. Assessing interdisturbance synergism is challenging due to the short length of historical records and the confounding influences of land use and climate changes on natural disturbance dynamics. We used dendrochronological methods to reconstruct defoliator outbreaks and fire occurrence at ten sites along a longitudinal transect running …
Interactions Of Insects, Fire And Climate On Fuel Loads And Fire Behavior In Mixed Conifer Forest, Daniel Girard Gavin, Aquila Flower, Gregory M. Cohn, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Russell A. Parsons
Interactions Of Insects, Fire And Climate On Fuel Loads And Fire Behavior In Mixed Conifer Forest, Daniel Girard Gavin, Aquila Flower, Gregory M. Cohn, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Russell A. Parsons
Environmental Studies Faculty and Staff Publications
Mixed-conifer forests in the interior Pacific Northwest are subject to sporadic outbreaks of the western spruce budworm, the most destructive defoliator in western North America. Such outbreaks usually occur synchronously over broad regions and lead to widespread decreases in growth rates and low to moderate levels of mortality. In the last century, changing land use and fire suppression have led to an increase in the amount and density of host tree species, and changed fire regimes. This has altered the severity and frequency of both fire and western spruce budworm. In spite of the ecological and economic significance of these …