Before the advent of intensive forest management and fire suppression, western North American forests exhibited a naturally occurring resistance and resilience to wildfires and other disturbances. Resilience, which encompasses resistance, reflects the amount of disruption an ecosystem can withstand before its structure or organization qualitatively shift to a different basin of attraction. In fire-maintained forests, resilience to disturbance events arose primarily from vegetation pattern-disturbance process interactions at several levels of organization. Using evidence from 15 ecoregions, spanning forests from Canada to Mexico, we review the properties of forests that reinforced qualities of resilience and resistance. We show examples of multi-level landscape resilience, of feedbacks within and among levels, and how conditions have changed under climatic and management influences. We highlight geographic similarities and important differences in the structure and organization of historical landscapes, their forest types, and in the conditions that have changed resilience and resistance to abrupt or large-scale disruptions. We discuss the role of the regional climate in episodically or abruptly reorganizing plant and animal biogeography and forest resilience and resistance to disturbances. We give clear examples of these changes and suggest that managing for resilient forests is a construct that strongly depends on scale and human social values. It involves human communities actively working with the ecosystems they depend on, and the processes that shape them, to adapt landscapes, species, and human communities to climate change while maintaining core ecosystem processes and services. Finally, it compels us to embrace management approaches that incorporate ongoing disturbances and anticipated effects of climatic changes, and to support dynamically shifting patchworks of forest and non-forest. Doing so could make these shifting forest conditions and wildfire regimes less disruptive to individuals and society.
1.USDA FS, Pacific Northwest Res Stn, Wenatchee, WA 98801 USA 2.Univ Washington, Coll Environm, SEFS, Seattle, WA 98195 USA 3.Aldo Leopold Wilderness Res Inst, Rocky Mt Res Stn, Missoula, MT USA 4.Penn State Univ, Dept Geog, University Pk, PA 16802 USA 5.Penn State Univ, Earth & Environm Syst Inst, University Pk, PA 16802 USA 6.Univ Montana, Dept Ecosystem & Conservat Sci, Missoula, MT 59812 USA 7.USDA FS, Pacific Southwest Res Stn, Davis, CA USA 8.Univ Calif Berkeley, Ctr Fire Res & Outreach, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA 9.Univ New Mexico, Dept Biol, Albuquerque, NM 87131 USA 10.Univ Montana, Dept Forest Management, Missoula, MN USA 11.USDI USGS, New Mexico Landscapes Field Stn, Los Alamos, NM USA 12.Univ Calif Berkeley, Dept Environm Sci Policy & Management, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA 13.Univ Autonoma Baja California, Marine Sci Fac, Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico 14.Colorado State Univ, Ft Collins, CO 80523 USA 15.Univ British Columbia, Dept Geog, Vancouver, BC, Canada 16.Univ Guelph, Dept Geog, Guelph, ON, Canada 17.RW Gray Consulting Ltd, Chilliwack, BC, Canada 18.Washington State Dept Nat Resources, Olympia, WA USA 19.USDA FS, Pacific Northwest Res Stn, Corvallis, OR USA 20.Rocky Mt Res Stn, Fire Sci Lab, Missoula, MT USA 21.Wilderness Soc, Northern Rockies Reg Off, Bozeman, MT USA 22.Univ Colorado, Dept Geog, Boulder, CO 80309 USA 23.USDA FS, Rocky Mt Res Stn, Ft Collins, CO USA 24.Colorado State Univ, Dept Forest & Rangeland Stewardship, Ft Collins, CO 80523 USA 25.USDA FS, Pacific Southwest Res Stn, Redding, CA USA 26.USDA Forest Serv, Pacific Southwest Reg, Vallejo, CA USA
Recommended Citation:
Hessburg, Paul F.,Miller, Carol L.,Parks, Sean A.,et al. Climate, Environment, and Disturbance History Govern Resilience of Western North American Forests[J]. FRONTIERS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION,2019-01-01,7