1. Managing fire with fire in Alaskan black spruce forests: Impacts of fire severity on successional trajectory and future forest flammability
So now that I have given you that background, my research questions are:
In interior Alaska
2) And in particular soil carbon sequestration.

2. WHO ARE WE?
Teresa Hollingsworth- Boreal Ecology Cooperative Research Unit,USDA Forest Service, PNW Research Station
Terry Chapin- University of Alaska
Jill Johnstone- University of Saskatewan
Michelle Mack and Ted Schuur- University of Florida
David Verbyla- University of Alaska
Emily Bernhardt- UAF
Leslie Boby- UFL
Andy Ruth- NPS
Katie Villano- UAF
Julie Benioff
Jamie Hollingsworth
Emily Tissier

3. Background for study
TNH work on black spruce communities (Hollingsworth et al. (2006) Can. J. For. Res. 36: , Hollingsworth, Schuur et al. (in revision) Ecosystems)
JJ work on tree successional trajectories (Johnstone & Chapin (2006) Ecosystems 9: 14-31, Johnstone & Kasischke (2005) Can. J. For. Res. 35: , Johnstone (2005) Can. J. For. Res. 35: )
DV work on burn severity (Epting, J. and D. L. Verbyla Canadian Journal of Forest Research. 35: )

4. Background for study (cont.)
Extensive area burned in Alaska in 2004
Alaska landscape dominated by flammable black spruce
Wildland fire behavior is heavily dependent natural mosaic of land cover types
Future landscape flammability will be driven by patterns of forest recovery
=> What is the potential for black spruce sites to regenerate to less flammable, deciduous forests?
=> Can regeneration trajectories be predictably linked to fire severity, pre-fire vegetation, and site moisture?

5. Picea mariana (black spruce) communities
Black spruce exhibits large phenotypic plasticity
Exists in a large range of environmental conditions
Black spruce is fire-adapted
Predominant tree type in interior Alaska
In addition to its large range

6. What are the relationships between pre-fire stand structure and composition and post-fire successional trajectory?

7. Study design
90 sites established in 2004 burns along Dalton, Taylor, and Steese Highways
32 intensive study sites
arranged across combinations of high-low site moisture & high-low burn severity
7 treeline sites
Detailed pre-fire stand data available for 14 sites
Reconstruction of pre-fire conditions at remaining sites

9. Severity: Moisture: Low High Dry Wet
Example of our classification scheme for sites. Severity is the amount of physical change in an ecosystem caused by burning. Severity classification was a visual score of % canopy consumed and depth of burning of forest floor—rough, fast, analagous to the types of assesments that land managers make
Moisture was classified by vegetation-drainage relationships developed in unburned stands.
Wet