Santa Fe, New Mexico
uidaho.edu
This workshop offers the opportunity to advance work in the integration of neo- and paleo-ecological research focusing on bark beetles and other non-fire forest disturbances.
Since the year 2000, the intensity and spatial scale of native bark beetle outbreaks in western North America is unprecedented, affecting over 47,000,000 ha of coniferous forests from Alaska to Mexico. Similar outbreaks have also occurred recently in Poland, Czech Republic, and Switzerland. In these ecosystems severe outbreaks alter forest structure and composition, reorganize carbon and nitrogen stocks, and modify interactions with wildfire. Beetle-killed forests also devalue adjacent real estate, diminish air and water quality, and detrimentally impact landscape aesthetics that reduce tourism revenues.
Model forecasts suggest that bark beetle populations will continue to expand during the coming century due to warming temperatures, which underscores the need for a workshop to integrate and advance our understanding of bark beetle and other forest pathogen disturbances across temporal and spatial scales.
The proposed workshop intends to achieve two primary goals:
1) provide a synthesis of the antecedent landscape conditions and ecosystem outcomes related to bark beetle outbreaks across temporal and spatial scales; and
2) identify and prioritize key areas of uncertainty to motivate future research agendas.
This workshop will bring together leading paleoecologists, ecologists, biologists, and land managers from around the globe. It will be associated with the Novus Research Coordination Network lead by Kendra McLauchlan and additional coordination support will be provided by Philip Higuera and Andrea Brunelle, both leading paleoecologists with research foci that include bark beetles, wildfire, and other forest disturbances.
To enhance multi-disciplinary participation involvement, we intend to schedule this workshop two days in advance of the Western Forest Insect Work Conference in spring of 2015 at Taos, New Mexico (USA). This arrangement will encourage participation and input from the forestry community and will also provide opportunities for international participants to interact with a broad spectrum of the bark beetle research community in North America.
To learn more about registering, please contact the workshop coordinator:
Jesse Morris (jlmorrisuidaho.edu (jlmorris[at]uidaho[dot]edu))
Post-meeting material
> Paper in Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, January 2018