Fire on the Mountain: 2 Forests Offer Clues to Yellowstone’s Fate in a Warming World<br />For the past 10,000 years, these woods have burned approximately every 100 to 300 years, meaning fires typically scorched old trees<br />But as climate change leads to longer and hotter dry seasons, younger forests throughout the Yellowstone region may start burning more frequently.<br />Yellowstone National Park<br />Grand Teton National Park<br />Second, the fires could burn up larger sections of forest.<br />But climate change may be pushing even these hardy forests past their breaking point, said Dr. Harvey,<br />and how trees regrow in Stumptown could be a sign of things to come.<br />Small islands of forest often survive even within otherwise burned areas, said Brian Harvey, an ecologist at the University of Washington,<br />and seeds from these preserved areas often blow into the surrounding burned forests or are carried there by animals.<br />But when part of the young forest burned again just sixteen years into its regrowth,<br />creating Stumptown, it had not yet produced many serotinous cones.<br />“When fires burn at short intervals, we have a lot fewer trees coming back,” Dr. Turner said.
