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Plot locations on the 2005 School Fire in southeastern Washington, USA. Plots were stratified by burn severity, salvage logging (horizontal hatch), and seeding with native grasses (vertical hatch).
Source publication
As the size and extent of wildfires has increased in recent decades, so has the cost and extent of post-fire management, including seeding and salvage logging. However, we know little about how burn severity, salvage logging, and post-fire seeding interact to influence vegetation recovery longterm. We sampled understory plant species richness, dive...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... August 2005 School Fire burned ap- proximately 21 000 ha of forest and grassland south of Pomeroy, Washington, on the Umatil- la National Forest (Figure 1). Much of this mountainous area contains high plateaus deep- ly cut by canyons, with steep slopes ranging from 10 % to 100 %. ...
Context 2
... annual precipitation for the years we sampled (2005 to 2011) was 1460 mm, while average annual daily maximum and minimum temperatures were 10.6 °C and 2.1 °C, respectively (data from nearest weather station, Touchet SNOTEL (Figure 1) 1686 sta- tion, 46° 6' 36" N, −117° 51' 0" W, elevation 1681 m). Annual precipitation in the year of the fire (2005) was 1135 mm, and in the subse- quent six years was 1671 mm, 1285 mm, 1631 mm, 1572 mm, 1455 mm, and 1473 mm. ...
Context 3
... were few places where we could find unburned plots with similar site conditions as the plots we sampled in the burned areas. We searched extensively, but only found three unburned locations within the fire perimeter that met our criteria for sam- pling in that they were neither recently har- vested nor heavily used for recreation or other land use ( Figure 1). Native grass seeding was applied, using a helicopter in October 2005, to some areas burned with high severity (712 ha). ...
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Citations
... Ecological disturbances due to intensive salvage logging operations have been widely reported, with impacts highly dependent on site characteristics, soil erodibility, and logging methods and equipment (Fernández and Vega, 2016;García-Orenes et al., 2017). Negative consequences often include soil compaction due to heavy machinery, which, in turn, can modify hydrological responses (Malvar et al., 2017;Morgan et al., 2015;Slesak et al., 2015), delay vegetation recovery (Wagenbrenner et al., 2016), and have detrimental effects on nutrient cycling (Pereg et al., 2018), carbon fluxes (Hartmann et al., 2014;Serrano-Ortiz et al., 2011), and soil biodiversity . Intensive salvage logging has also been found to negatively impact the cover of biocrust-forming mosses in diverse biomes, both at the short and medium term (Bradbury, 2006;García-Carmona et al., 2020;Pharo et al., 2013). ...
Understanding the role of biocrust-forming mosses in soil recovery after wildfires is necessary for assessing the resilience of managed ecosystems. The purpose of this study was to investigate the mid-term impacts of two contrasting post-fire management strategies on soil recovery in eucalypt plantations in north-central Portugal, where a high cover of biocrust-forming mosses developed post-fire, contributing to erosion control. Six years after a wildfire, we examined the legacy effects of salvage logging and two rates of mulch application using logging residues (a standard rate of 8.0 Mg ha-1 and a reduced rate of 2.6 Mg ha-1) on soil properties, and explored the interaction between moss biocrusts and forest management practices on soils. Our findings reveal the resilience of soils to physical disturbance after logging operations, with no persistent negative effects on their physicochemical properties. Although forest residue mulches showed minimal influence on soils after six years, an interesting interaction with moss biocrusts was observed. In the absence of moss cover, direct contact of wood residues with soil at the standard mulch rate promoted higher nutrient content and biochemical activity, potentially attributed to accelerated decomposition processes. Regardless of the management applied, our study highlights the role of moss biocrusts in improving soil aggregation and biochemical processes in the mid-term. However, the severe water repellency observed in these soils may have impeded further biocrust expansion. Understanding the implications of forest management practices on soil recovery after wildfires is imperative for guiding strategies aimed at promoting ecosystem recovery and resilience in fire-prone managed forest ecosystems.
... Furthermore, SBS maps feed the critical United States Geologic Survey (USGS) post-fire debris-flow model (Staley et al., 2016). Moreover, the SBS map informs decisions relating to water quality, erosion, aquatic habitat, forest recovery, timber harvest, and other forest and water quality interventions (Bladon et al., 2014;Cheung & Giardino, 2023;Cole et al., 2020;Hohner et al., 2019;Morgan et al., 2015;Robichaud et al., 2020Robichaud et al., , 2021Smith et al., 2011;Uzun et al., 2020;Wagenbrenner et al., 2023). ...
Fire alters soil hydrologic properties leading to increased risk of catastrophic debris flows and post‐fire flooding. As a result, US federal agencies map soil burn severity (SBS) via direct soil observation and adjustment of rasters of burned area reflectance. We developed a unique application of digital soil mapping (DSM) to map SBS in the Creek Fire which burned 154,000 ha in the Sierra Nevada. We utilized 169 ground‐based observations of SBS in combination with raster proxies of soil forming factors, pre‐fire fuel conditions, and fire effects to vegetation to build a digital soil mapping model of soil burn severity (DSMSBS) using a random forest algorithm and compared the DSMSBS map to the established SBS map. The DSMSBS model had a cross‐validation accuracy of 48%. The established technique had 46% agreement between field observations and pixels. However, since the established technique is manual, it could not be compared to the DSMSBS model via cross‐validation. We produced SBS class uncertainty maps, which showed high prediction probabilities around field observations, and low probabilities away from field observations. SBS prediction probabilities could aid post‐fire assessment teams with sample prioritization. We report 107 km² more area classified as high and moderate SBS compared to the established technique. We conclude that blending soil forming factors based mapping and vegetation burn severity mapping can improve SBS mapping. This represents a shift in SBS mapping away from validating remotely sensed reflectance imagery and toward a quantitative soil landscape model, which incorporates both fire and soils information to directly predict SBS.
... In situ recovery is driven by individuals that survive within the burned area; ex situ recovery is driven by off-site colonization from outside the fire footprint; and nucleated recovery is driven by survivors in fire refugia that remained unburned or burned less severely (Downing et al., 2020;Nimmo et al., 2022). These three pathways are facilitated by a range of plant fire-adaptive traits, such as the capacity to resprout (e.g., from underground structures such as large taproots, corms, or rhizomes), fire-cued seed germination or seed dispersal capacity, and availability of and distance to propagule source (Clarke et al., 2013;Morgan et al., 2015;Nolan et al., 2021;Roberts, 2004;Stark et al., 2006). ...
... Fire severity, defined as the immediate and direct effect of fire on an ecosystem through loss or decomposition of organic matter (Keeley, 2009), is an important driver of understory plant composition and structure (Abella & Fornwalt, 2015;Burkle et al., 2015;Huisinga et al., 2005;Morgan et al., 2015). However, the effects of fire severity on understory plant communities are not consistent across ecosystems and are generally poorly understood (Abella & Springer, 2015). ...
... Postfire conditions favor colonizer species that rapidly establish following disturbance and take advantage of reduced competition (Brodie et al., 2021;Freeman et al., 2007;Morgan et al., 2015). While we did not explicitly test for the effect of fire severity on colonizer-type species-those with short lifespans and long-distance dispersal capabilities-approximately 50% of the 33 exotic species we recorded were short-lived (annual or biennial) forbs or graminoids. ...
Anthropogenic influences are altering fire regimes worldwide, resulting in an increase in the size and severity of wildfires. Simultaneously, throughout western North America, there is increasing recognition of the important role of Indigenous fire stewardship in shaping historical fire regimes and fire-adapted ecosystems. However, there is limited understanding of how ecosystems are affected by or recover from contemporary "megafires," particularly in terms of understory plant communities that are critical to both biodiversity and Indigenous cultures. To address this gap, our collaborative study, in partnership with Secwépemc First Nations, examined understory community recovery following a large, mixed-severity wildfire that burned in the dry and mesic conifer forests of British Columbia, Canada, with a focus on plants of high cultural significance to Secwépemc communities. To measure the effect of a continuous gradient of fire severity across forest types, we conducted field assessments of fire severity and sampled understory plants 4 years postfire. We found that native species richness and richness of species of high cultural significance were lowest in areas that burned at high severity, with distinct com-positional differences between unburned areas and those that burned at high severity. These findings were consistent across forest types characterized by distinct historical fire regimes. In contrast, richness of exotic species increased with increasing fire severity in the dominant montane interior Douglas-fir forests , with exotic species closely associated with areas that burned at high severity. Our study indicates that recent megafires may be pushing ecosystems outside their historical range of variability, with negative implications for ecosystem recovery and cultural use across these fire-affected landscapes. We also found consistently higher plant diversity, and both native and cultural species richness, in subalpine forests. Collectively, our results provide strong evidence of the ecological and cultural significance of low-to moderate-severity fire and subalpine forests, and the longstanding and ongoing role of Indigenous peoples in
... Although immediate ground-cover measurements were not taken, we often found 0%-30% ground cover after high-severity fires in the immediate post-fire period [14,52,53], with salvage logging potentially decreasing that value even further [20,34,54]. On these fires, the wildfire appears to have reduced cover by at least half in our study sites, which we can estimate from NDVI values ( Figure 5). ...
... The values found on these sites are typical for a mixed-conifer forest in the western US, as Ref. [34] found total vegetation cover on skid-trail plots at a site in eastern Washington at least doubled between the first and second post-fire years. Another study in the same region found vegetation recovery was slow after delayed salvage logging (3-4 years post-fire), particularly on sites burned at high or moderate burn severity [14], with exposed soil still high at~50-75%. Although the percent of soil exposed is only a proxy for DSD, there was a significant relationship between DSD measurements, the percent of exposed soil, and NDVI values (Table 5; Figures 3 and 6). ...
... 14Regressive partitioning trees from the rPart package in R. The tree on the left is thresholding the field points (n = 29) into DSD classes using the post-salvage NDVI data (PS_NDVI), while the tree on the right is using 2022 NDVI data (NDVI_22). ...
Wildfires have nearly become a guaranteed annual event in most western National Forests. Severe fire effects can be mitigated with a goal of minimizing the hydrologic response and promoting soil and vegetation recovery towards the pre-disturbance condition. Sometimes, post-fire actions include salvage logging to recover timber value and to remove excess fuels. Salvage logging was conducted after three large wildfires on the Lolo National Forest in Montana, USA, between 2017 and 2019. We evaluated detrimental soil disturbance (DSD) on seven units that were burned at low, moderate, and high soil burn severity in 2022, three to five years after the logging occurred. We found a range of exposed soil of 5%–25% and DSD from 3% to 20%, and these values were significantly correlated at r = 0.88. Very-high-resolution WorldView-2 imagery that coincided with the field campaign was used to calculate Normal Differenced Vegetation Index (NDVI) across the salvaged areas; we found that NDVI values were significantly correlated to DSD at r = 0.87. We were able to further examine this relationship and determined NDVI threshold values that corresponded to high-DSD areas, as well as develop a model to estimate the contributions of equipment type, seasonality, topography, and burn severity to DSD. A decision-making tool which combines these factors and NDVI is presented to support land managers in planning, evaluating, and monitoring disturbance from post-fire salvage logging.
... However, it is important to note that the positive relationship between past burning and future burning is partially contingent on the size of the seed transfer zones relative to each other; thus, caution should be made in comparing the relative increase in burning of seed zones that differ in size. Though many factors influence the decision to restore particular land areas (including land ownership, proximity to roads, fire size and severity, and restoration potential, among many other considerations), our results indicate that historic fire data and information on the most widely and frequently burned seed transfer zones may help forecast future seed needs if conditions remain similar, and that ecoregionally specific seed transfer zones experiencing high fire occurrence can be used as targets for seed needs planning for restoration (Robichaud et al. 2009;Morgan et al. 2015;Erickson & Halford 2020). We also found that considering high-priority conservation goals (in our case, preservation of greater sage-grouse core habitat) provided only slightly different recommendations for seed procurement than considering the ecoregion as a whole. ...
Restoration planning requires a reliable seed supply, yet many projects occur in response to unplanned events. Identifying regions of greater disturbance risk could efficiently guide seed procurement. Using fire in U.S. Cold Deserts as an example, we demonstrate how historic disturbance can inform seed production choices. We compared differences in fire frequency, area burned, and percent of area burned among different management areas, identifying regions of particular need. We also present a case study focused on fire occurrence within important wildlife habitat, specifically looking at the greater sage‐grouse priority areas for conservation (PACs) within the Northern Basin and Range ecoregion. We used geospatial seed transfer zones as our focal management areas. We broadly considered generalized provisional seed transfer zones, created using climate and stratified by ecoregion, but also present results for empirical seed transfer zones, based on species‐specific research, as part of our case study. Historic fire occurrence was effective for prioritizing seed transfer zones: 23 of 132 provisional seed transfer zones burned every year, and, within each ecoregion, two provisional seed transfer zones comprised ≧50% of the total area burned across all years. Fire occurrence within PACs largely reflected the seed transfer zone priorities found for the ecoregion as a whole. Our results demonstrate that historic disturbance can be used to identify regions that encounter regular or large disturbance. This information can then be used to guide seed production, purchase, and storage, create more certainty for growers and managers, and ultimately increase restoration success.
... habituales tras un incendio, y que limitan el establecimiento y desarrollo de los árboles (Urretavizcaya et al., 2006;Urretavizcaya & Defossé, 2019). Mientras que la riqueza de especies vegetales generalmente se recupera pronto tras un incendio, la composición de la comunidad vegetal suele ser variable entre niveles de severidad, ya que diferentes estrategias reproductivas y rasgos pueden ser favorables en cada situación (Fernández-García et al., 2020;Giorgis et al., 2021;Morgan et al., 2015;Wang & Kemball, 2005). Nuestros resultados mostraron que la riqueza inicial era diferente entre las condiciones de no quemado y quemado, pero no se detectaron diferencias entre la severidad media y alta. ...
Resumen
En todo el mundo se está produciendo un cambio en los regímenes de incendios que afecta a la sucesión post‐fuego. En este contexto, cada vez es más necesario priorizar las zonas de restauración y centrarse en sus objetivos particulares. Evaluar el sotobosque emergente representa la primera aproximación a una revegetación post‐fuego, necesaria para establecer las directrices de restauración adecuadas. En este estudio, nos propusimos evaluar la respuesta inicial post‐fuego en un incendio de mediana a alta severidad en los bosques Andino‐Patagónicos. Para ello (1) se comparó la estructura de la comunidad vegetal entre las distintas severidades de incendio, (2) se evaluó la respuesta de la estructura de la comunidad vegetal a la interacción entre severidad del incendio y tipo de bosque, (3) se comparó la composición vegetal entre las categorías de severidad del incendio‐tipo de bosque y (4) se evaluó la regeneración de especies leñosas tras el incendio. Encontramos que la cobertura vegetal del estrato inferior comenzó a recuperarse rápidamente tras el incendio y en mayor medida en la severidad media que en la alta, mientras que la cobertura del estrato superior fue incipiente en la severidad media y nula en la alta. Las especies nativas predominaron en las parcelas quemadas y no quemadas, aunque fueron menores en las quemadas. Entre las formas de crecimiento, arbustos y árboles se vieron afectados de forma similar por el fuego, independientemente del tipo de bosque. La composición de la comunidad vegetal varió entre la mayoría de las categorías de severidad del incendio‐tipo de bosque. La frecuencia de especies leñosas que se regeneran por rebrote y por semillas fue menor en las parcelas quemadas que en las no quemadas. Estos resultados sugieren que aunque existe una pronta recuperación de la vegetación, la elevada cobertura de suelo expuesto y la pérdida del estrato superior de vegetación pueden favorecer la erosión y dificultar el establecimiento de árboles. Además, las especies arbóreas que sólo se regeneran a partir de semillas probablemente no se recuperarán de forma natural. Además, la presencia de especies exóticas con alto riesgo de invasión puede requerir control. Por lo tanto, dado que la severidad del incendio y el tipo de bosque pueden conducir a diferentes escenarios de recuperación natural post‐fuego, se deberían tomar diferentes acciones de restauración para promover sistemas resilientes para el futuro.
... This is consistent with our findings for natural sites where taxa richness declined from no burn to high-burn sites at the landscape scale (richness of taxa pooled across all sites and sampling occasions; γ in Table 3) as well as the site scale (Figure 2; α in Table 3; Table 4). Similarly, our findings agree with three studies within a review by Miller and Safford (2020), which found that plant richness peaked at low to intermediate levels of fire severity (DeSiervo et al., 2015;Morgan et al., 2015;Richter et al., 2019). ...
Abstract As human populations expand and land‐use change intensifies, terrestrial ecosystems experience concurrent disturbances (e.g., urbanization and fire) that may interact and compound their effects on biodiversity. In the urbanizing landscapes of the southern Appalachian region of the United States of America (US), fires in mesic forests have become more frequent in recent years. However, 80 years of forest management practices aimed at fire suppression in this region may have decreased landscape resistance or resilience to high‐severity fires. At the same time, housing development is rapidly expanding in the wildland–urban interface, creating opportunities to examine the combined effects of urbanization and fire disturbances on plant communities when fires occur. Here, we investigated how understory plant communities were affected by a fire that varied in severity at sites in Gatlinburg, TN, and in the adjacent Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Our goal was to investigate the individual and combined effects of fire and urbanization on plant community composition in the second growing season after a fire. Overall, we found a significant interaction effect of fire severity and urbanization on total plant abundance and richness, such that increasing fire severity was associated with lower abundance and richness in natural areas but higher abundance and richness in exurban areas. Shannon diversity was significantly affected by fire severity and urbanization, but not interactively. Plant composition was affected by fire severity, urbanization, and their interaction effects. Understory plant communities in exurban locations (low‐density residential areas near protected lands) were resilient following the pulse disturbance event (fire), likely because of their consistent exposure to a press disturbance (urbanization). Our study indicates a press disturbance may change the way a subsequent pulse disturbance affects plant communities. Our findings contribute new insights into how disturbances can interact to alter patterns of biodiversity in the southeastern US.
... While plant species richness generally recovers early after a fire, plant community composition usually remains variable among fire severities since different reproductive strategies and traits may be favourable in each situation (Fernández-García et al., 2020;Giorgis et al., 2021;Morgan et al., 2015;Wang & Kemball, 2005). Our results showed that initial richness was different between the unburned and burned conditions, but no differences were detected between mid and high severity. ...
A change in fire regimes is occurring worldwide, affecting post‐fire succession. Under this context, there is an increasing need to prioritize restoration areas and focus on their particular goals. To assess the emergent understorey represents the first approximation of post‐fire re‐vegetation, necessary to establish appropriate restoration guidelines. In this study, we aimed to assess the initial post‐fire response in a mid to high‐severity fire in the Andean‐Patagonian forests. We (1) compared plant community structure among fire severities, (2) evaluated the response of plant community structure to the interaction between fire severity and forest type, (3) compared plant composition among fire severity‐forest type categories and (4) evaluated woody species regeneration after fire. We found that the vegetation cover of the lower stratum began to recover early after the fire and to a greater extent in mid than in high severity, whereas the upper stratum was incipient in the mid and nil in high severity. Native species predominated in burned and unburned plots, although they were less in the burned plots. Among the growth form, shrubs and trees were similarly affected by fire, independently of the forest type. Plant community composition varied among most fire severity‐forest type categories. The frequency of woody species regenerated by resprouts and by seeds was lower in burned than unburned plots. These results suggest that although there is an early recovery of vegetation, the high cover of exposed soil and the loss of the upper vegetation stratum may favour erosion and difficult tree establishment. Besides, tree species that only regenerate from seeds will probably not recover naturally. In addition, the presence of exotic species with high invasive risk may need control. Thus, since fire severity and forest type may drive different post‐fire natural recovery scenarios, different restoration actions should be taken to promote resilient systems for the future.
... These authors explained this increase by the better edaphic conditions that favour post-fire recruitment of new plants, especially in semi-arid areas (for instance, thanks to sunlight interception), where the water shortage is a limiting factor towards plant growth. In other environments, Morgan et al. (2015) and Jonas et al. (2019) reported increases in species richness, but no differences in species diversity as a response to mulching. These investigations were carried out longer after fire and post-fire treatments, while, in our study, the vegetation survey was carried out few months after these disturbances. ...
Straw and wood chips have been widely used as mulch materials to control post-fire erosion in burned forests. However, their effects on ecosystem multifunctionality (EMF) have been little explored. This information is essential to give forest managers insight about the effectiveness of these strategies for restoration of severely-burned forests. To fill this gap, this study has evaluated the short-term (one year after wildfire) changes in ecosystem properties (associated to soil characteristics), structure (linked to plant diversity), individual ecosystem functions, and EMF in a Mediterranean forest. This delicate ecosystem was burned by a wildfire and then mulched with straw or wood chips, and EMF in these conditions was compared to burned and untreated, and unburned sites. The results have shown that: (i) neither wildfire nor mulching significantly changed soil properties with the exception of pH; (ii) in contrast, ecosystem structure significantly declined in mulched plots due to wildfire, and mulching did not limit the alteration in species richness; (iii) among the analysed ecosystem functions, waste decomposition and nutrient cycling, which were significantly higher in unburned soils compared to burned sites, showed intermediate and similar values in mulched plots, while water cycle and wood production (the latter with the exception of unburned plots) were similar among all soil conditions, and climate regulation was significantly higher only in soils mulched with wood chips compared to burned sites ; (iv) EMF increased from burned and untreated soils to unburned sites; (v) mulching was effective at limiting the reduction in EMF due to wildfire, but only partially dampened the impact of the fire. Moreover, the combined analysis of ecosystem properties, structure and functions, and EMF revealed that: (i) all functions, except water cycle, were associated to one or more soil or vegetation parameters; (ii) species community composition noticeably influenced several ecosystem functions, and, therefore, EMF; (iii) species richness is a key driver of wood production; (iv) pH, which was found as the most influential soil property on ecosystem functions and EMF, may be considered as an important ecological predictor of forest functions in basic soils of Mediterranean forests. This study may be of practical importance for policymakers and land managers about the most effective actions to preserve the ecosystem EMF in fragile ecosystems, such as the Mediterranean wildfire-affected forest
... Salvage logging is often done to recover the economic loss of trees following a fire; however, the heavy equipment used may cause soil compaction and slow vegetative growth at less productive sites (Wagenbrenner et al 2015;Leverkus et al 2018). Managers may choose to seed with native grass species to reduce both erosion and the spread of invasive species (Morgan et al 2015). Our paper aims to determine (1) the most effective ponderosa pine introduction method at a mid-elevation site in a semi-arid climate and (2) if logging treatments and erosion seeding positively or negatively impact ponderosa pine seedling abundance, vegetation and ground cover, and bare ground. ...
... Conversely, Ritchie and Knapp (2014) found no significant effect on the survival of planted ponderosa pine seedlings from salvage logging. Studies have also shown that salvage logging post-high-severity wildfire does not increase natural regeneration, because natural regeneration is so dependent upon nearby seed sources (Keyser et al 2008;Morgan et al 2015). Povak et al. (2020) reported that 13-28 years following mixedand high-severity wildfires in eastern Washington natural regeneration for conifer species was highest at sites that had been salvage logged except for ponderosa pine trees. ...
Background
In July 2012, a lightning strike ignited the Arapaho Fire in the Laramie Mountains of Wyoming and burned approximately 39,700 ha. This high-severity fire resulted in 95% mortality of ponderosa pine ( Pinus ponderosa P. & C. Lawson) at the University of Wyoming’s Rogers Research Site. Ponderosa pine recruitment post-high-severity wildfire is limited in semi-arid and mid-elevation forests in the Rocky Mountain region due to the reduction of seed supplies from living trees, warm temperatures, and limited precipitation. We used an experimental block design to determine management treatments that would increase ponderosa pine abundance, and we measured the impacts to the vegetation community, ground cover, and bare ground following a high-severity wildfire. Treatments included a combination of one pine introduction treatment (natural regeneration, broadcast seeding, and planted seedlings), one logging treatment (no logging, bole only removal, whole tree removal), and erosion control seeding (no erosion seeding and seeding with a native grass mix) in each plot within a block.
Results
Our results indicate that the pine introduction treatment “planted seedlings” was the most effective restoration treatment in semi-arid, mid-elevation sites, although the overall survival rate of seedlings from initial planting in 2015 to 2017 was only 6%. “Whole tree removal” had a weak positive effect on the “planted seedlings” ponderosa pine abundance. The estimated mean percent moss cover was higher in the “no logging” treatment, and this treatment resulted in a lower mean percent bare ground. Overall, 2 years after implementation, the management treatments did not result in different vegetation communities.
Conclusions
No difference in vegetation functional group cover among the pine introduction and logging treatments at the RRS is likely due to the large landscape heterogeneity with differing slopes and two different aspects coupled with the short time frame since the implementation of the treatments at the site. The direct implications of these findings suggest that hand planting ponderosa pine seedlings is an effective way for managers to reintroduce ponderosa pine 3 years following a high-severity wildfire in semi-arid and mid-elevation sites in the northern Rocky Mountains.
