Climatic Variation and Disturbance Interactions in Subalpine Rocky Mountain Forests

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Climatic Variation and Disturbance Interactions in Subalpine Rocky Mountain ForestsVeblen, Thomas T.University of Colorado at BoulderClimate change is expected to exacerbate disturbances to forested landscape through impacts on frequency of fire and insect outbreaks. This project will address the need for an improved understanding of the spatial and temporal nature of such disturbances, the role of climate variability on forest dynamics, and the significance of these landscape legacies in altering forest susceptibility to future disturbance. Specifically, this work will examine how forest disturbances vary in relation to broad environmental gradients in southern Rocky Mountain forest ecosystems. Key questions to be addressed in this research include: what climatic conditions are conducive to fire and lethal insect outbreaks across topographic and broad climatic gradients; how does topographic variability affect the nature and rate of forest recovery following fire and insect outbreaks and future susceptibility to disturbance; and how do landscape legacies resulting from major previous disturbance by fire and insect outbreaks affect the subsequent frequency, spread and severity of disturbances? This project will contribute new knowledge to how disturbance processes in forested landscapes respond to climatic variation in spatially heterogeneous environments. Methodologically, this research will combine detailed tree-ring analyses of disturbance and climatic variation with GIS-analyses of the spatial interactions of past disturbance events in relation to topographic setting. This multi-scale empirical analysis will elucidate the relative roles of fine- versus coarse-scale constraints on disturbance processes. The results of the project will be of importance to forest resource planning and management in National Parks and National Forests in Colorado. In particular, legacies left in the landscape by prior disturbance by fire and insect outbreaks need to be considered when planning for the spread and severity of future disturbance events.