Grand Teton’s lodgepole forests are exquisitely adapted to wildfire but can they survive a changing climate?
In 1988, a fire ecologist named Monica Turner clambered into a helicopter and soared over Yellowstone National Park’s still-smoldering forests. One fire after another had torched the park that infamous summer, ultimately burning some 800,000 acres, and Turner expected devastation. Instead she beheld a green-and-black quilt, burned forests and living ones mingled across the landscape. A year later, lodgepole pine seedlings carpeted the ground so densely that, she said, “you couldn’t put your foot down without squashing a whole bunch of them.” The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem’s forests, she realized, were more resilient than anyone had imagined.