Forests of the southern rocky mountains over the past 30 years have experienced larger, more intense, and more frequent wildfires [1-3]. The recent shift in fire frequency and magnitude over the…

Boise State University, a public research university, was awarded a $223,073 grant from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to conduct research on forest disturbances in the Southern Rocky Mountains ecoregion. The research will investigate the impacts of wildfire, drought, bark beetle outbreaks, blowdown events, and timber harvesting on forest ecosystems in the region. This grant is not associated with a set-aside designation. The research findings will contribute to understanding how these disturbances interact and influence forest recovery dynamics, which is important for developing effective forest management strategies in the face of climate change.

Forests of the southern rocky mountains over the past 30 years have experienced larger, more intense, and more frequent wildfires [1-3]. The recent shift in fire frequency and magnitude over the past few decades has had economic and social consequences [4, 5], including deflated residential housing prices near burned areas [6, 7] and direct costs of $2-3 billion spent annually by federal agencies to fight wildfire [8, 9]. Increases in wildfire disturbance have been shown to decrease the resistance of individual trees to subsequent disturbance agents [10, 11], and to alter regional water resources [12] and wildlife responses [13], especially under prolonged drought events [14, 15]. Also, human land use, both historical legacies such as logging and current intermixing along the wildland-urban interface [16, 17], alters forest structure and dynamics, and introduces more anthropogenic ignition sources [18]. These changes in wildfire regimes, combined with increasingly severe and prolonged drought events [19, 20], blowdown events [21], and widespread insect outbreaks [22, 23] contribute to a widespread increase in tree mortality [24] and altered post-fire regeneration [25, 26]. Further, some of these disturbances are expected to continue to increase in frequency and/or severity in coming decades due to anthropogenic climate change [27]. Additionally, the past century has been marked by management strategies designed figure 1: dominant landscape forest disturbances of the southern rocky mountains ecoregion, including a) drought, b) bark beetle outbreak, c) wildfires, d) blowdown, e) fuel treatment and timber harvest, and f) human settlement. Figure 1: dominant landscape forest disturbances of the southern rocky mountains ecoregion, including a) drought, b) bark beetle outbreak, c) wildfires, d) blowdown, e) fuel treatment and timber harvest, and f) human settlement. Figure 1. Dominant landscape forest disturbances of the southern rocky mountains, including a) drought, b) bark beetle, c) wildfire, d) blowdown events, and e) timber harvest. 2 around fuel load/connectivity reductions, wildfire suppression [28] and post-disturbance salvage logging treatments [29], which in some areas have altered fuel legacies beyond the historical range of variability of some forested ecosystems [30-33]. The results of successful fire suppression efforts in the early to mid-20TH century reduced the impact of wildfire in the shortterm, but consequently and unintentionally increased the long-term wildfire potential and risk [34, 35]. These disturbances fire, drought, blowdown, insect epidemics, and logging (FIG. 1), are not uniform in their distribution or intensity across the southern rockies, and thus create a patchwork of potential interactions across the region, leaving many unanswered regional-scale ecological questions about whether disturbance interactions will change recovery dynamics.