Complex Challenges of Maintaining Whitebark Pine in Greater Yellowstone under Climate Change:

Climate suitability is projected to decline for many subalpine species, raising questions about managing species under a deteriorating climate. Whitebark pine (WBP) (Pinus albicaulis) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) crystalizes the challenges that natural resource managers of many high mountain ecosystems will likely face in the coming decades. We review the system of interactions among climate, competitors, fire, bark beetles, white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola), and seed dispersers that make WBP especially vulnerable to climate change. A well-formulated interagency management strategy has been developed for WBP, but it has only been implemented across <1% of the species GYE range. The challenges...

2015 Proposal: Evaluating management alternatives to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change on whitebark pine ecosystems in the Greater Yellowstone using landscape simulation modeling

Existing climate change science and guidance for restoring and maintaining whitebark pine forests will be evaluated using landscape simulation modeling to inform implementation of the Greater Yellowstone Coordinating Committee (GYCC) Whitebark Pine (WBP) subcommittee’s “WBP Strategy”. We will design a “no constraints” management scenario based on the GYCC WBP Strategy and 2015 publication Restoring whitebark pine ecosystems in the face of climate change and incorporating the latest projections of future climate suitability for WBP and other landscape stressors (mountain pine beetles, competing species, wildland fire). We will use the landscape simulation model FireBGCv2 to simulate interactions of future climate,...

Evaluating_management_alternatives_WBP_DataManagementPlan

Putting climate adaptation on the map: developing spatial management strategies for whitebark pine in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Forest ecosystems are increasingly showing the impacts of climate change. Natural resource managers face the need to develop management strategies to adapt to projected future climates. Various frameworks for developing climate adaptation strategies exist, but there are few that detail where to place management actions in the landscape to be most effective under anticipated future climate conditions. We developed an approach to spatially allocate climate adaptation actions across heterogeneous landscapes and applied the method to the case of whitebark pine (WBP) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE). WBP is expected to be vulnerable to climate-mediated shifts in suitable habitat, pests, pathogens, and fire....