Disturbances: Fire and Beetle
Climate Space Fire Regimes: Informing LCC Design now and in the future

Goal: Overlay current GNLCC projects with climate domains and fire databases to pinpoint restoration/mitigation treatments

Methodology o Define Climate Domains—condensed using PCA (latitudinal-temperature and longitudinal-precipitation gradient) o Characterize the current fire space—where and when do they occur within climate domains and describe by frequency and size class o Use this analysis to place into climate change scenario context and provide pathways for future mitigation and adaptation efforts
Historical Weather Data Clustering for Scenario-based fire simulation

Goal: Develop a dynamic fire management plan that incorporates historical weather and climate data to simulate fire behavior—Done through scenario trees, and hierarchical clustering, and including forecast errors

Methodology o Scenario Trees—scenarios and probabilities of how/where fire will spread, and characterize fire behavior as mild-moderate-extreme based on those probabilities o Forecast Errors: Variables to Include in estimates:
 Temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and wind direction
 Historical data to build into forecast models
 Incorporates Euclidian distance o Ordering Historical weather data from least severe to most severe o Hierarchical Clustering: Conditional Probabilities
 Provides outputs of distribution of variables
 Counts and records the probabilities of certain conditions (severity) as a function of variables (t, rh, wd, ws)

Conclusion—uses historical weather data to support management decisions on the ground with a limited budget
Relating Severity of a Mountain Pine Beetle (MPB) Outbreak to Forest Management

Use geospatial tools and boosted regression trees to examine effect of historical harvesting decisions on spatial extent and severity of beetle-killed stands in Fraser Experimental Forest

Methodology o Map Severity
 14 experimental plots, allometric equations and RS/GIS o Examine how harvest impacted outbreak o DV—Measured outbreak severity dead/total basal area across Fraser Experimental Forest o IV—Used boosted regression trees to test effect of aspect, slope, elevation, forest management to severity

Conclusions—Management decisions made decades before outbreak were an effective defense against MPB, however a no action alternative may need to be considered
Effects of MPB on water quality

Goals: Identify appropriate modes of communication and knowledge transfer across scientists, water providers, managers, and the public; translating research to action on the ground

Collected data by diverse means, i.e. randomized household survey to communities across Front Range and
Survey elicitation of experts to understand values, perceptions and needs regarding MPB and water quality

Conclusions o Limited levels of knowledge, challenges to knowledge transfer o Identification of concerns, information needs and outreach needs—sources of info—media neighbors, and USFS o Knowledge transfer improved by increased communication—opportunities for cross-jurisdictional communication via collaboration
1