Choose Your Poison: Plant Disease Outbreaks May Be Curbed by Periodic Wildfire

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A controlled burn in Cedar Creek oakland

Wildfires have made headlines worldwide in recent years — and for good reason. Evidence points to increasing wildfire frequency and intensity across many vulnerable ecosystems as climate change impacts grow ever more evident. However, periodic wildfires in ecosystems adapted to them can actually help inhibit plant disease outbreaks, according to new research from Cedar Creek… Read more »

Fire Brings New Perspectives on Disturbance at H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest

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View of the Holiday Fire burning through H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest

By Natasha Griffin, PhD candidate at Oregon State University The staff of the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest LTER site had almost no time to prepare when a massive wildfire swept through the region in early September. Stoked by dry late-summer conditions and extreme high winds, Oregon’s Holiday Farm fire began spreading rapidly as soon as… Read more »

Seeing the forest for the shrubs in Southern Appalachia

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Rhododendron shrubs leave no space left unfilled as its branches stretch over the forest floor and streams. Photo credit: Maura Dudley.

As ecosystems respond to human activity, what organisms will emerge as new trailblazers, shaping the diversity and resilience of these changing environments? And how can land managers identify these species early on to better prepare for the future? Forests of southern Appalachia have a history fraught with human activity. Hardy and towering, American chestnut and… Read more »

LTER Road Trip: Boreal Forest Research Legacies

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Xanthe Walker organizes tree cores while sampling in the 1987 burn near Delta Junction, Alaska.

By Haley Dunleavy, PhD Candidate at Northern Arizona University Leaving my house, I feel like a runaway. I am packed inside an economy-sized rental car with my field clothes, camping gear, and of course, face masks, heading 300 miles north to meet my advisor Michelle Mack and fellow lab members for a couple days of… Read more »

Stop giving early and late Arctic seasons the ‘cold shoulder’, say LTER scientists

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Streams LTER Research Assistant Frances Iannucci (a coauthor on the study) recording dissolved oxygen in a watershed associated with the Arctic LTER.

Climate change is hitting Arctic ecosystems hard – permafrost is rapidly thawing, releasing previously-frozen organic matter into the surrounding environment. Knowing not only how, but when, dissolved organic matter (DOM) and other nutrient concentrations are changing is important for predicting effects of climate change, but the picture is currently incomplete.  A new paper from Arctic… Read more »

Recent boreal wildfires are changing forest communities in Interior Alaska

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Bonanza Creek LTER boreal forest after a fire

As boreal forest wildfires increase in severity and frequency, new patterns of post-fire recovery are emerging. Research led by Jill Johnstone at Bonanza Creek LTER has found that recent wildfires led to changes in tree species dominance that are persisting through post-fire succession in Alaskan boreal forests, indicating the potential for a widespread shift in… Read more »

The Ups and Downs of Coastal Marsh Elevation Modeling

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VCR LTER Coastal Bay

The frequency of large coastal storms and hurricanes is on the rise, impacting the biological services that wetlands and marshes provide. Modeling makes it possible to predict how future storms may affect these ecosystems, but accurately modeling widespread impacts of large storms like Hurricane Sandy, which bombarded much of the U.S. eastern shoreline, requires significant… Read more »

Challenging the Pulse-Reserve Paradigm

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Pulse-reserve theory has been a dominant conceptual framework for drylands since the 1970s. Detailed long term observations and experiments at the SEV LTER revealed that individual rainfall pulses rarely produce significant reserves and that many ecosystem processes do not “pulse” on the same time scales. SEV LTER researchers have improved pulse-reserve theory with the Threshold… Read more »

Climate Variability Interacts with Average Weather Conditions

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The climate of SEV LTER ecosystems has become drier and more variable during the past 100 years. SEV LTER research is gaining new insight into the biological consequences of these dual climate changes. For instance, increased climate variability has benefitted desert grassland during dry periods but reduced its productivity in wet periods, while plains grassland… Read more »

Drought in Rainforests is Increasing in a Warming World

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Drought in tropical wet forest alters greenhouse gas production by soils, affects key nutrient dynamics, and reduces forest productivity. Downscaling studies at LUQ LTER support global models that predict declining precipitation through the end of the century. Current ecosystem drying and warming model projections predict that net forest ecosystem productivity may fall to zero by… Read more »

Hurricane Frequency Impacts Forest Biodiversity and Ecosystem Function

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The long term Canopy Trimming Experiment revealed many important aspects of hurricane disturbance, particularly that canopy opening caused more change in biota and biogeochemistry than debris deposition. More frequent disturbance led to canopy opening but less debris deposition, and changed forest species composition, which may alter resilience in the face of future disturbances. Frequent hurricane… Read more »

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