On the limited consensus of mountain pine beetle impacts on wildfire

The mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae) is a native bark beetle whose outbreaks leads to widespread conifer forest mortality. Of particular concern to forest and wildfire managers is the influence of MPB outbreaks on wildfire via spatial legacies left in impacted forest stands. There is, however, limited consensus in the literature regarding how MPB outbreaks affect wildfire across western North America.

This meta-analysis aims to (1) summarize available evidence regarding MPB-wildfire interactions, and (2) identify environmental and methodological indicators associated with various wildfire responses (i.e., amplified, neutral, or dampened) post-outbreak.

We include peer-reviewed publications focusing on MPB outbreaks and subsequent wildfire activity in forests across western Canada and the USA between 2000 and 2021. A classification scheme was used to examine attributes of each publication to assess which indicators contribute most to their associated wildfire response.

We found that spatial scale, forest fuels, and weather are main drivers of variation in wildfire response post-outbreak. Metrics of forest fuels and inclusion of weather data on a stand-scale are related to amplified fire responses, whereas dampened responses correspond to landscape-scale analyses. Furthermore, red-stage stands are associated with amplified fire response, whereas other stages are associated with dampened response-supporting current conceptual models of the importance of outbreak stage on wildfire.

Advancing our understanding regarding drivers of wildfire responses post-MPB outbreak is key to developing accurate, and comparative research studies. These findings provide crucial information for wildfire, and forest management agencies, especially in forests newly exposed to this disturbance interaction under climate change.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10980-023-01720-z.