Forest health of high-elevation, five-needle pines at Glacier National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve: 2013 data report

Borgman, Erin

The purpose of this report is to summarize five-needle pine (bristlecone, limber, and whitebark pines) monitoring we conducted collaboratively with Montana State University in 2013 in Glacier National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve using standardized methods. We include these data in a database built for this purpose, which is available to the National Park Service (NPS) and partners through the NPS Data Store (https://irma.nps.gov/DataStore/). As NPS and others continue to monitor five-needle pines, these data and the database form a foundation and resource for better un-derstanding and collaborative monitoring of these important and iconic species. Five-needle pine trees, also known as white pines, are mem-bers of the subgenus Strobus that have bunches of 5 needles. As keystone species, they play a significant role in maintain-ing ecosystem structure, function, and biodiversity. Over the last few decades high-elevation, five-needle pine forests have endured novel stressors and disturbance, including the invasive exotic pathogen, Cronartium ribicola, which causes white pine blister rust, increasing mountain pine beetle (Den-droctonus ponderosae) activity, and changes in precipitation and temperature patterns. The NPS Inventory and Monitoring program held a climate change workshop in 2010 entitled, “Monitoring Ecological Response to Climate Change in High Elevation Park Units of the Great Northern Landscape Conservation Coopera-tive.” As a result of this workshop, the NPS Rocky Mountain Inventory and Monitoring Network (hereafter, Rocky Moun-tain Network) partnered with Montana State University through a Rocky Mountains Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit cooperative agreement to monitor five-needle pine spe-cies in 3 national parks. Fieldwork was conducted in 2013 to monitor bristlecone pine (Pinus aristata) and limber pine (Pinus flexilis) trees at Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve, limber pine at Rocky Mountain National Park, and whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) at Glacier National Park. Key results from monitoring include the following: - The highest levels of blister rust infection were found in Glacier (23.7% of living trees in plots infected), fol-lowed by Great Sand Dunes (7.1%) and Rocky Mountain (0.3%). - Evidence of mountain pine beetle activity was highest at Rocky Mountain (6.1% of five-needle pine trees in plots affected), followed by Great Sand Dunes (0.4%), and was absent from Glacier. - There was some regeneration, as evidenced by seedlings (<1.4 m tall) in all 3 parks. Seedlings found in subplots included numerous species of pine, fir, spruce, as well as aspen and juniper. Aspen seedling density was very high (3,466 seedlings/hectare) in Great Sand Dunes and low in Glacier (68.6 seedlings/hectare). No aspen seedlings were found in our plots in Rocky Mountain. - Dominant mature species found at each park included limber pine (Great Sand Dunes and Rocky Mountain) and subalpine fir (Glacier). Because methods we used are standardized and similar to those used by the USDA Forest Service (USFS) and the NPS Greater Yellowstone Inventory and Monitoring Network, datasets spanning the Rocky Mountains could potentially be combined and analyses expanded to potentially reveal broad scale patterns or trends in five-needle pines in the Rocky Mountain region. To facilitate such an endeavor, the Rocky Mountain Network funded the creation of the Five-Needle Pine Monitoring Database. This relational database currently houses Rocky Mountain Network data, USFS data from the Rocky Mountains spanning Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado, and data collected by other partner organizations over the last 13 years. If future data are integrated into the database, we can explore larger-scale trends.

Forest health of high-elevation, five-needle pines at Glacier National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, and Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve: 2013 data report

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