Eighty Eight Years of Change in a Managed Ponderosa Pine Forest Form

Instructions and help about Eighty eight Years Of Change In A Managed Ponderosa Pine Forest

>> [Background Music] Hi, I'm Mike Battaglia. I'm a research forester with an emphasis in silviculture at the US Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station in Fort Collins. The primary topic of my research is to understand how Ponderosa Pine Forests have changed over the past century due to fire suppression and how we can return and maintain the resiliency these forests once had to wildfires. What we know about climate change is that it's projected to get warmer and more frequent droughts along where the Ponderosa Pine Forests are growing and so what that means and we're already seeing it now is that snow melt occurs much earlier in the spring and so instead of fires starting in May or June, they're starting to happen in March, April, and May and so with this earlier snow melt, we have a longer fire season. So that's just going to increase the time window in which a fire can start in these systems. I think people would be interested in my research because fires, wildfires burn ever