Recovery of Above G round B iomass and Foliar N itrogen in Yellowstone National Park after the 1988 Fire

1. Recovery of Above Ground Biomass and Foliar Nitrogen in Yellowstone National Park after the 1988 Fire Danielle Haddad Compton Tucker (NASA Goddard) Scott Ollinger (UNH) Luigi Boschetti (University of Maryland), Jeff Masek and Shannon Franks (Goddard), Monica Turner (University of Wisconsin), and Creighton Litton (University of Hawaii at Manoa)

2. In the summer of 1988 36% of Yellowstone National Park was burned by Forest Fires

3. Objective • To use a time series of Landsat images to estimate changes in above ground biomass and foliar nitrogen over time after major disturbance by fire. • How long does it take the forest to recover from a major forest fire? • How long does it take for the carbon and nitrogen pool to recover? • Do they recover at the same rate? • Could nitrogen limitation slow down the forest recovery?

4. Why is this important • Fires are becoming more frequent in Yellowstone. • Field studies can only look at a limited number of sites. • A time series also lets us look at the past and the present, while field studies only give you a snap shot of one point in time. • Limited nitrogen availability can limit plant growth and fire burns foliage and soil organic matter resulting in nitrogen losses. • It is important to know what long term impacts fire has on Yellowstone’s ecosystem.

5. Methods Band 5 Above Ground Biomass • Using past field studies to find a correlation between above ground net primary production (ANPP) and NDVI (normalized difference vegetation index). • 1988 is time zero, where above ground biomass is assumed to be near zero do to being burned away by fire. • Each year we add on the estimated ANPP (estimated from the Landsat NDVI for that year) to the above ground biomass pool and subtract out 2% of the above ground biomass pool each year to account for losses in biomass due to mortality and litter loss. • When the ANPP is equal to the output for that year then the forest is at steady state and full matured. Foliar Nitrogen • Using past field studies to find a correlation between % foliar nitrogen and Landsat band 5 surface reflectance. • Using changes in the surface reflectance of band 5 we will track how % foliar nitrogen changes over time. • By looking at Landsat images before and after the 1988 fire we will see how long it takes for % foliar nitrogen to reach prefire levels. Ollinger et al. 2008

6. Diagram of method for estimating above ground biomass ANPP Mortality + Woody Litter FOREST BIOMASS Q M S Input Output At Steady State, M is Constant; Q = S Edited from Ollinger’s 2010 Biogeochemistry class

9. Yellowstone: 1988 Fire and Sites Burned in 1988 Unburned in 1988 Ground Sample Locations

14. P value = <0.0001*

15. Works Cited Krankina et al. (2005) Effects of climate, disturbance, and species on forest biomass across Russia. Canadian Journal of Forest Research 35: 2281 – 2293 Litton, Creighton M., Above- and Belowground Carbon Allocation in Post-fire Lodgepole Pine Forests: Effects of Tree Density and Stand Age, Ph.D., Department of Botany, December, 2002. Ollinger et al. (2008) Canopy nitrogen, carbon assimilation, and albedo in temperate and boreal forest: Functional relations and potential climate feedbacks. PNAS 105: 19336 -19341 Turner et al. (2004) Landscape Patterns of Sapling Density, Leaf Area, and Aboveground Net Primary Production in Postfire Lodgepole Pine Forest, Yellowstone National Park (USA). Ecosystems 7: 751 – 775 Turner et al. (2009) Variation in foliar nitrogen and aboveground net primary production in young post fire lodgepole pine. Can. J. Res. 39: 1024 - 1035 Wildland Fires in Yellowstone. National Park Service: http://www.nps.gov/yell/naturescience/wildlandfire.htm Images Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) onboard Landsat 4 and 5: http://glovis.usgs.gov LEDAPS: Landsat Ecosystems Disturbance Adaptive Processing Systems, Jeff Masek: http://ledaps.nascom.nasa.gov Regional Burn Severity Mosaics from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) by USGS and the Forest Service: http://www.mtbs.gov