Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

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 …