Yellowstone rising again from ashes of devastating fires

Stone, R

Ecosystems in Yellowstone Park have recovered rapidly following widespread destruction by fires in the summer of 1988. The 249 fires, which were largely due to extreme weather conditions, destroyed more than 321,000 hectares, or 36 percent of the park, according to Don Despain of the U.S. Geological Survey in Bozeman. Nonetheless, the postfires ecosystems are likely to be basically identical to those that prospered before the fires. In a study published in the June 1997 Conservation Biology, geographer Cathy Whitlock of the University of Oregon in Eugene and colleagues devised computer models to predict changes in species distribution in the Yellowstone region that may occur in response to a twofold increase in atmospheric CO2. Whitlock says that the new landscape could be susceptible to more frequent, but possibly smaller, fires.

Yellowstone rising again from ashes of devastating fires

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