Adequate Knowledge to Determine the Type, Distribution, and Timing of Management Practices to Sustain Healthy, Productive Forest Ecosystems Resistant to Insects, Diseases, and Wildfire.

McCaughey, Ward W.: Schmidt, Wyman C. 2001. Taxonomy, distribution, and history. In: Tomback, Diana F.; Arno, Stephen F.: Keane. Robert E.. eds. Whitebark Pine Communities: Ecology and Restoration. Washington, DC: Island Press: 29-40.

Jones, J. Greg; Chew, Jimmie D.: Zuuring, Hans R. 1999. Applying simulation and optimization to plan fuel treatments at landscape scales. In: Gonzalez-Caban, Armando; Omi, Philip N., tech. coords. Gen Tech. Rep. PSW-GTR-173. Proceedings of the Symposium on Fire Economics. Planning, and Policy: Bottom Lines: 1999 April 05-09; San Diego, CA. Albany. CA: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station: 229-236.

Healthy forests are resistant to disturbance and resilient in response to injury. New Fire Plan funding enabled to us to initiate new studies on management effects on residual tree fire in high elevation forests. Aggressive control of wildfire along with selective harvest of serai, fire-resistant conifer species such as western larch and ponderosa pine have, ironically, led to stand conditions highly susceptible to intense, severe wildfire. Earlier, this knowledge helped us develop ecologically acceptable treatments for jointly reducing the insects, pathogens, and fire, and we cooperated in establishing several demonstration sites to illustrate these findings. Forest managers use these sites frequently as they inform and educate various publics about forest management. We began research to quantify management effects on the physiology of northern Rockies forests, with the goal of providing managers with simple indices of potential resilience to disturbance.

Whitebark pine is critical for grizzly bear survival in the Yellowstone Ecosystem. Elsewhere, whitebark is an integral part of the high elevation environments. The survival of this tree is severely threatened by white pine blister rust, an introduced disease from Europe, native insects such as the mountain pine beetle, and fire exclusion at the upper elevations. In some places, 90 to 95 percent of the stands are dead due to one or more of these mortality factors. Studies have shown that current and future losses will have negative impacts for regional and . local biodiversity of plants and animals. There may also be impacts on water quality and stream flows in subalpine watershed as well as a reduction of aesthetic values. Our unit wrote two chapters in a new book, "Whitebark Pine Communities - Ecology and Restoration" describing the current ecological status and potential management options for whitebark pine Taxonomy, Distribution, and History of Whitebark pine and Natural Regeneration Process.

We continue to develop special successional models and allocation models, such as SIMPPLLE and MAGIS, and GIS databases to explore forest/pest interactions on landscape scales.