In the last two decades, the spruce beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis Kirby) has killed >1.5 million ha of forest in Southcentral Alaska, and more than 350,000 cumulative hectares have been impacted since 2016. We need to understand what landscape and climate conditions predispose forests to stand level mortality during beetle outbreaks in order to identify areas most prone to beetle disturbance and to support the development of appropriate climatic indices that can serve as early warning of outbreaks. The goal of this project is to determine what initiated the recent beetle-kill event on the Kenai Peninsula so that appropriate indices can be monitored and/or effective adaptation strategies can be taken for future...
