The DOI matches its Crossref record.
Spatiotemporal patterns of mountain pine beetle activity in the southern Rocky Mountains
Abstract
The current mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreak in the southern Rocky Mountains has impacted ∼750 000 ha of forest. Weather and habitat heterogeneity influence forest insect population dynamics at multiple spatial and temporal scales. Comparison of forest insect population dynamics in two principal host species may elucidate the relative contribution of weather and landscape factors in initiating and driving extensive outbreaks. To investigate potential drivers of the current MPB outbreak, we compared broadscale spatiotemporal patterns of MPB activity in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) from 1996 to 2010 in Colorado and southern Wyoming with regional weather fluctuations, and then tracked the annual meso‐scale progression of the epidemic in lodgepole pine with respect to weather, topographic, previous MPB activity, and forest stand attributes. MPB activity in lodgepole pine compared to ponderosa pine showed higher magnitude and extent of spatial synchrony. Warm temperatures and low annual precipitation favorable to beetle populations showed high regional synchrony across areas of both pine species, suggesting that habitat interacts with weather in synchronizing MPB populations. Cluster analysis of time series patterns identified multiple, disjunct locations of incipient MPB activity (epicenters) in lodgepole pine, which overlapped an earlier 1980s MPB outbreak, and suggests a regional trigger (drought) across this homogenous forest type. Negative departures from mean annual precipitation played a key role in subsequent spread of MPB outbreak. Development of the outbreak was also associated with lower elevations, greater dominance by lodgepole pine, stands of larger tree size, and stands with higher percentage canopy cover. After epidemic levels of MPB activity were attained, MPB activity was less strongly associated with stand and weather variables. These results emphasize the importance of considering differences in patterns of MPB dynamics for different host pine species even under similar regional‐scale weather variation and the nonstationarity of outbreak dynamics over time.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cited by
Observed and anticipated impacts of drought on forest insects and diseases in the United States
Kolb, T. E., Fettig, C. J., Ayres, M. P., Bentz, B. J., Hicke, J. A., Mathiasen, R., Stewart, J. E., & Weed, A. S. (2016) · Forest Ecology and Management · doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2016.04.051 · Cited by 409
Climate, Environment, and Disturbance History Govern Resilience of Western North American Forests
Hessburg, P. F., Miller, C. L., Parks, S. A., Povak, N. A., Taylor, A. H., Higuera, P. E., Prichard, S. J., North, M. P., Collins, B. M., Hurteau, M. D., et al. (2019) · Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution · doi:10.3389/fevo.2019.00239 · Cited by 308
Self-citationArea burned in the western United States is unaffected by recent mountain pine beetle outbreaks
Hart, S. J., Schoennagel, T., Veblen, T. T., & Chapman, T. B. (2015) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.1424037112 · Cited by 128
Self-citationKane, J. M., Varner, J. M., Metz, M. R., & van Mantgem, P. J. (2017) · Forest Ecology and Management · doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2017.09.037 · Cited by 95
Metadata
- Authors
- Chapman, T. B., Veblen, T. T., & Schoennagel, T.
- Venue
- Ecology
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2012-10
- Volume
- 93
- Issue
- 10
- Pages
- 2175-2185
- ISSN
- 0012-9658 (ISSN-L)
- 1939-9170
- OpenAlex
- W2155430063
- Cited by
- 178
- References
- 0
- FWCI
- 16.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Spatiotemporal patterns of mountain pine beetle activity in the southern Rocky Mountains. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1890/11-1055.1
- The paper
- Chapman, T. B., Veblen, T. T., & Schoennagel, T. (2012). Spatiotemporal patterns of mountain pine beetle activity in the southern Rocky Mountains. Ecology. https://doi.org/10.1890/11-1055.1
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
