Climate impacts to forest ecosystem processes: Douglas-fir growth in northwestern U.S. mountain landscapes and area burned by wildfire in western U.S. ecoprovinces
Littell JS. 2006. Climate impacts to forest ecosystem processes: Douglas-fir growth in northwestern U.S. mountain landscapes and area burned by wildfire in western U.S. ecoprovinces. University of Washington
From the Abstract: "Climate plays an important role in the structure and function of forest ecosystems on seasonal to evolutionary time scales and on local to planetary spatial scales. The supply of water and thermal energy can both facilitate and limit the rates of important processes throughout the ecological hierarchy. In this dissertation, I demonstrate a combination of appropriate scale and gradient-based inquiry for two studies of climate impacts to ecosystem processes in the western U.S.A.: the area burned by fire in western ecoprovinices and the growth of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) in northwestern mountain landscapes. First, I present relationships between the area burned by fire and climate for the period 1916-2003 in the western U.S.A. I use a novel reconstruction technique to backcast late-20th century datasets and show that the area burned by wildfire in the West was significantly controlled by climate for the full period."
- Type
- Academic
- Authors
- Littell, Jeremy
- Date of Issue
- 2006
- Publisher
- University of Washington
- Units
- OLYM
- Keywords
- Climate, Dissertation, Douglas-fir forest, Ecosystem Studies, Montane, Wildfire