Fire, fungi, and beetle influences on a lodgepole pine ecosystem of south-central Oregon

Abstract

Interactions between fire, fungi, bark beetles and lodgepole pines growing on the pumice plateau of central Oregon are described. Mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreaks occur mainly in forests that are 80–150 years old with a mean diameter of about 25 cm and weakened by a fungus, Phaeolus schweinitzii. The outbreak subsides after most of the large diameter trees are killed. The dead trees fuel subsequent fires which return nutrients to the soil, and a new age class begins. The surviving fire scarred trees are prone to infection by the slow fungal disease and about 100 years later these trees are then susceptible to bark beetle attack.