Abstract
How have changes in land management practices affected vegetation patterns in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem? This question led us to develop a deterministic, successional, vegetation model to “turn back the clock” on a study area and assess how patterns in vegetation cover type and structure have changed through different periods of management. Our modeling spanned the closing decades of use by Native Americans, subsequent Euro-American settlement, and associated indirect methods of fire suppression, and more recent practices of fire exclusion and timber harvest. Model results were striking, indicating that the primary forest dynamic in the study area is not fragmentation of conifer forest by logging, but the transition from a fire-driven mosaic of grassland, shrubland, broadleaf forest, and mixed forest communities to a conifer-dominated landscape. Projections for conifer-dominated stands showed an increase in areal coverage from 15% of the study area in the mid-1800s to ∼50% by the mid-1990s. During...
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