Two of the most prominent disturbances to trees are wildfire and bark beetles in the Northwest United states. Over the years, millions of acres of timberland and forest have been damaged or destroyed due to wildfires and bark beetles. Both of these disturbances are brought about by climate and stand conditions. The future forecast for climate changes suggest that there will be an increase in wildfires and also the bark beetle outbreaks. These disturbances affect the water quantity, wildlife, and timber production but with the combination of bark beetle cause tree mortality and wildfires there will be more combustible fuels for fires to feed off of. Effects of the combination could mean larger and hotter crown fires in forests infected by bark …show more content…
Normal search methods such as reference databases, the internet and personally researching were used. Publications that reported new results on bark beetle caused mortality and wildfire were used. The publications were rated by their validness and the combinations of fuels and fire characteristics were identified and used. The results of the study found that there were fifty-six published studies that talked about the effect of bark beetle outbreaks on wildfires. Seventeen of the studies did not show evidence, twenty-two of the last thirty-nine were peer reviewed, and nine were government published, three were informal reports, four were graduate student dissertations, and one was a chapter of a book. The studies broadly talked about fires and fuels and how fuels affected fires but the publications talking about changing in fuels after bark beetle caused tree mortality normally used field observations. The others normally used simulation, statistics, or …show more content…
Two expectations were established; probability of a fire happening and the intensity of burn of forest stands that contained bark beetle mortality compared to those that did not. The probability of a fire happening was taken from the amount of canopy fuels such as dead crowns and ground fuels such as pine straw or leaves. The probability of a fire happening on the ground was small when the trees were just affected by bark beetles but increased as the age of the affected area grew because of the foliage that falls to the ground. Canopy fires were low at the begging of the bark beetle infection but increased until foliage in the top had all died and then decreased until it had fell to the forest floor. Findings also reported that fires occurring in some stands that have had bark beetle tree mortality did not have fires for years. This finding shows that fires do not follow bark beetle tree mortality. This shows that the probability of a fire in these areas is also dependent upon the weather and conditions of the stand. Other results show that other causes affect wildfires. Other causes could be stand structure, topography, past disturbances, and vegetation