Climate Change, Forests, Fire, Water, and Fish: Building Resilient Landscapes, Streams, and Managers
Climate Change, Forests, United States Department Fire, Water, and Fish: of Agriculture Forest Service Rocky Mountain Building resilient landscapes, streams, Research Station and managers General Technical Report RMRS-GTR-290 September 2012 Charles Luce, Penny Morgan, Kathleen Dwire, Daniel Isaak, Zachary Holden, and Bruce Rieman Luce, Charles; Morgan, Penny; Dwire, Kathleen; Isaak, Daniel; Holden, Zachary; Rieman, Bruce. 2012. Climate change, forests, fire, water, and fish: Building resilient landscapes, streams, and managers. Gen. Tech. Rep. RMRS-GTR-290. Fort Collins, CO: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. 207 p. ABSTRACT Fire will play an important role in shaping forest and stream ecosystems as the climate changes. Historic observations show increased dryness accompanying more widespread fire and forest die-off. These events punctuate gradual changes to ecosystems and sometimes generate stepwise changes in ecosystems. Climate vulnerability assessments need to account for fire in their calculus. The biophysical template of forest and stream ecosystems determines much of their response to fire. This report describes the framework of how fire and climate change work together to affect forest and fish communities. Learning how to adapt will come from testing, probing, and pushing that framework and then proposing new ideas. The western U.S. defies generalizations, and much learning must necessarily be local in implication. This report serves as a scaffold for that learning. It comprises three primary chapters on physical processes, biological interactions, and management decisions, accompanied by a special section with separately authored papers addressing interactions of fish populations with wildfire. Any one of these documents could stand on its own.
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