Jonathan Coop

Reduced Fire Severity Offers Near-Term Buffer to Climate-Driven Declines in Conifer Resilience Across the Western United States

Increasing fire severity and warmer, drier postfire conditions are making forests in the western United States (West) vulnerable to ecological transformation. Yet, the relative importance of and interactions between these drivers of forest change remain unresolved, particularly over upcoming decades. Here, we assess how the interactive impacts of changing climate and wildfire activity influenced conifer regeneration after 334 wildfires, using a dataset of postfire conifer regeneration from 10,230 field plots. Our findings highlight declining regeneration capacity across the West over the past four decades for the eight dominant conifer species studied. Postfire regeneration is sensitive to high-severity fire, which...

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2013 Proposal: Identification of fire refugia in Rocky Mountain ecosystems of the U.S. and Canada: Development and application of the refugium concept for biodiversity conservation over large spatial and temporal scales

We will develop an approach to identify fire refugia in Rocky Mountain ecosystems of the U.S. and Canada then test the function of refugia for biodiversity conservation under current and future climate/fire scenarios (Fig. 1). Our products will be designed to inform decision-making in land/easement acquisition, identification of critical areas for maintaining landscape and process connectivity/permeability, and extension of the temporal context for spatial conservation decision making. The approach will be testable for transferability to other locations and ecosystems.