Keynote Speakers

James Agee - University of Washington

Dr. Agee is Virginia and Prentice Bloedel Professor of Forest Ecology at the College of Forest Resources, University of Washington. His research focuses on disturbance ecology, and specifically the role of fire in forest ecology. A major conservation biology issue is how to reintroduce natural disturbances like fire into ecosystems that may have been altered by fire exclusion, grazing, and logging.

Current projects he is involved with, together with graduate students, research associates, and colleagues here and at other institutions include:

  • Fire and bark beetle mortality in old pine forests at Crater Lake National Park
  • Effects of coarse woody debris on reintroduction of fire in young dry site forests
  • Effect of thinning and burning on alien understory species in pine forests
  • Optimizing landscape-level fuel treatments
  • Effects of thinning and burning on ecosystem processes (a national project called Fire and Fire Surrogates, with 13 sites nationwide)

Plenary abstract:

Wildland Fire as a Forest Landscape Process - Problems of Scale

Fire has been an important historical landscape process and will remain so in the future. Identifying deviations from historic landscape character, and the potential for "uncharacteristic fire", have many scaled-based issues that are often overlooked in the evaluation process. The first is the concept of the fire regime, which tends to be somewhat clear for low-severity and high-severity fire regimes, but incredibly fuzzy for mixed-severity fire regimes. Depending on how severity levels are defined, almost any historic fire or current fire can be defined as mixed-severity. At stand scales, there are several tools available to evaluate fire behavior and effects. The First-Order Fire Effects Model (FOFEM) tends to overpredict prescribed fire effects because it assumes 100% coverage of every fire. The prediction of crown fire potential is quite dependent on scale. Torching that is quite predictable at a small plot scale may be "eliminated" at larger scales by averaging plots with high canopy base heights with those with very low canopy base heights. Independent crown fire potential is defined using quite crude models, and must be evaluated against local weather, rather than arbitrary thresholds, to be realistic. Fragmenting wildfire behavior at landscape scales must address the questions of how much landscape to treat, where to treat, and how often to treat. Choice of a metric to measure success (spread, flame length) is also important. While existing models are in need of refinement, probably a more critical need is intellectual honesty in the interpretation of model results.

Jesse Logan - EnviroWise Design

After finishing his PhD at Washington State University, Jesse Logan held faculty positions at Colorado Sate University and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He then joined the Forest Service as Project Leader for the Interior West Bark Beetle Project in Logan, Utah. He is currently an ecological consultant with EnviroWise Design in Emigrant, Montana. His primary research interests are quantitative insect ecology, dynamical systems theory and analysis, and historical ecology. Currently, he is almost exclusively applying these interests to landscape issues involving high-elevation (whitebark pine) ecosystems of the northern U.S. Rocky Mountains.

Plenary abstract:

Ghost Forests, Grizzly Bears, and the Mountain Pine Beetle: the Spiraling Consequences of Climate Change

Unprecedented outbreaks of a variety of native bark beetles are presently occurring across the forests of western North America. These outbreaks include the massive die-off of piñon pine in the south west, devastating outbreaks of spruce beetle in Alaska and massive mountain pine beetle outbreaks in Canada. All of these outbreaks share a common, underlying relationship to the warming trend that began in the western U.S. during the mid 1970s. Among the most disturbing of these events is the catastrophic mortality resulting from mountain pine beetle (MPB) in high elevation pine (whitebark pine) forests of the northern U.S. Rockies. These outbreaks are particularly significant because whitebark pine forests have not co-evolved with outbreak bark beetle disturbance and, as a result, are in danger of being lost over much of their current range.

Whitebark pine is of particular importance in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) because, as one of four critical food resources for grizzly bears, it is inexorably linked to recovery of this endangered species. Motivated by the ecological and cultural importance of the GYE, and also by questions regarding the future of grizzly bear habitat, we preformed computer simulations of MPB outbreak risk for the GYE using both historical data and projected climate change scenarios. Simulation results identified areas of whitebark pine that were predicted not to be at high risk for MPB outbreaks. In this respect, the Wind River Mountains were unique in two ways: they were predicted to (1) have not suffered the widespread MPB mortality that occurred during the warm period of the 1930s; and (2) in contrast to most of the whitebark pine habitat in the GYE, not to be at risk under climate change scenarios projected to end of century.

In order to evaluate simulation results, we conducted a Wind River reconnaissance trip that involved four phases: (1) aerial over flight; (2) landscape assessment from identified vantage points; (3) stand evaluation of identified mortality; (4) general observations from a ten days traverse of whitebark pine habitat. Results from this reconnaissance found no evidence for the widespread outbreaks that occurred elsewhere during the 1930s; and that current conditions indicate a healthy, functioning ecosystem that contains all critical elements for temporal continuity. Additionally, we found no evidence of white pine blister rust (an exotic pathogen that has had devastating effects over much of whitebark pine distribution).

Results from our Wind River reconnaissance are encouraging because they indicate that our landscape model may provide a valuable tool for developing climate change mitigation strategies across the entire distribution of whitebark pine. By identifying low-risk areas, like the Wind River Mountains, conservation strategies can be targeted to whitebark pine habitats with the highest probability of success. Additionally, our results indicate that current conservation strategies for grizzly bear recovery need to be flexible in meeting the changes in critical habitat resulting from climate change. In particular, the current grizzly bear core recovery area is based entirely on historical information that ignores the reality of climate change impacts. Our results indicate how this core area could be modified to accommodate this evolving reality.