Clarendon Press, Oxford, U.K. 268 p. Guillebaud, W.H. Common causes of empty seed are lack of pollination, abortion of the ovule, and insect damage. For. "Forest biology and management in high-latitude North American forests." In stands composed of approximately equal amounts of black and white spruce with 50% canopy closure, the same fire "burned both severely and intensely, crowning and killing all trees" [54]. fire history data. In Alaska, white spruce communities are most common in the boreal interior, between the Brooks Range in the north and the Alaska Range in the south. Another fire history study of 27 sites in the same area found that the MFRI in white spruce/quaking aspen stands (82 years) was not significantly different than that in black spruce stands (67 years) [32]. Sta., Portland OR, Res. Arctic 6:149–162. [74] The most recently exposed surfaces are occupied by sandbar vegetation or riparian shrub willows and alder (Alnus incana); with increasing elevation, the shrubs give way successively to balsam poplar and white spruce forest. ; White, D.P. Beaufort estate. Live the Cure. For more information about how climate change may affect fire regimes in Alaskan boreal forests and treeline communities, see the citations listed in Appendix C. White spruce communities and associated fire regimes may have varied and complex responses to climate change. 1953. Along the Mackenzie River, Northwest Territories, floodplain white spruce forests were "resistant" to fire; some stands had not burned in 300 years [57,109]. A study in black spruce stands indicated that fire severity—defined as depth of burn—tended to increase over the course of the fire season [68]. Can. The Alaska champion black spruce tree stands on the campus of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Historical and contemporary accounts of native Alaskan burning describe intentional burning in seasons with high precipitation or when conditions were not conducive to extensive fire spread. J. Rep. 1896, Vol. Branch, Ottawa ON, Publ. "Soil standards for planting Wisconsin conifers. Live the Cure. Notes sur l’écologie de quatre conifères du Québec: Sargent, C.S. 56:292–300. 275 p. La Roi, G.H. Current fire regimes in white spruce communities may not differ much from historical regimes because most of the Alaskan boreal forest is sparsely populated and has little road access. SUMMARY No data are given to support this statement. [7] The understory is dominated by feather mosses (Hylocomium splendens and Pleurozium schreberi, Ptilium crista-castrensis, and Dicranum spp. USDA, For. In white spruce stands of the Rosie Creek Fire near Fairbanks, forest floor fire severity varied; stands lost between 5% and 76% of their prefire organic matter [125]. In the Northern Forest Region: (15) red pine, (21) eastern white pine, (24) hemlock-yellow birch, (25) sugar maple-beech-yellow birch, (27) sugar maple, (30) red spruce-yellow birch, (32) red spruce, (33) red spruce-balsam fir, (37) northern white-cedar, and (39) black ash-American elm-red maple (Nienstaedt and Zasada 1990, Eyre 1980). One fire burned sometime between 1883 and 1895 [51] and the other in 2014 (Gracz 2014, personal communication [50]). Some studies predict that increases in fire extent, frequency, and severity could facilitate a shift from coniferous forests to early successional hardwood forest [14,72,111], although this was not observed in Denali National Park and Preserve [108]. Dep. FEIS reviews, APPENDIX C: Selected bibliography on climate change, Western North American boreal riparian stringer forest and shrubland, Alaskan quaking aspen and balsam poplar communities, APPENDIX A: Summary of fire regime information for Biophysical Settings covered in this synthesis, Figure 2. [103][104][105] This sensitivity is a major constraint affecting young trees planted without overstorey nurses in boreal climates (Sutton 1992).[106]. White Spruce Medical, Wholistic Internal Care. 1976. Mitt., Ptlium crista-castrensis (Hedw.) ; Van Cleve, K.; Foote, M.J. (1983). Newly flushed shoots of white spruce are very sensitive to spring frost (Smith 1949, Rowe 1955, McLeod 1964). The type shows little variation. AUTHORSHIP AND CITATION: Abrahamson, Ilana. Follow the links to FEIS reviews for further information. Book, New York NY. Div., Ottawa ON, Tech. Note 103. Climate change models predict varied effects on white spruce communities; some communities may expand while others may decline. Welcome to Alaska Specialty Woods We have been supplying the FINEST Sitka Spruce Instrument Tonewood material available to tonewood users, custom luthiers, manufacturers and other Builders of Acoustic Instruments since 1997 – processing thousands of soundboards annually from Sitka Spruce, Western Red Cedar & Alaskan Yellow Cedar. In severe fire years, individual fires in the boreal forest tend to be large—often burning about 124,000 to >500,000 acres (50,000->200,000 ha); in contrast, in unusually wet years, the area burned may be negligible [39]. Appendix A lists the Biophysical Settings (BpSs) covered in this review and summarizes data generated by LANDFIRE's [77] successional modeling for those BpSs. Researchers concluded that this counterintuitive increase in fire frequency was associated with the spread of black spruce, because black spruce stands are more flammable and support fire spread more easily than white spruce, hardwood, or tundra vegetation [28,60,63,72,88,90,114]. 1969. Publ. Nutrient cycling in interior Alaska flood plains. On the mixed hardwood-white spruce floodplain of Riley Creek, near the entrance to Denali National Park and Preserve in the Central Alaska Range, results of a small-scale study (~370 acres (150 ha)) suggest that fires occurred at 40- to 60-year intervals during the 150 years prior to active fire suppression [93]. [45] By itself, or with black spruce and tamarack (Larix laricina), white spruce forms the northern boundary of tree-form growth (Sutton 1969). Human-caused fires were included in this study, which suggests that these MFRIs are shorter than if only lightning-caused fires were included. (Jernigan, K. A., 9) Picea mariana (black spruce): uplands or muskegs of the middle Y-K region. (1976). [120][119][121] As well, other budworms, sawflies, and bark beetles, gall formers, bud midges, leaf miners, aphids, leaf eaters, leaf rollers, loopers, mites, scales, weevils, borers, pitch moths, and spittlebugs cause varying degrees of damage to white spruce (Ives and Wong 1988). Rep. FMR-X-85. In most of its range, white spruce occurs more typically in association with trees of other species than in pure stands. During the summer solstice, day length values range from 17 hours at its southern limits to 24 hours above the Arctic Circle.[7]. [107] First, classical definitions generally connote directional changes in species composition and community structure through time, yet the time frame needed for documentation of change far exceeds an average lifespan (Solomon et al. Gray’s Manual of Botany, 8th ed. 75 p. (Cited in Coates et al. Res. 24 p. Sutton, R.F. 1019. These fires may begin as multiple small fires that merge together into a single large fire [70]. Heal the Core. Landscape relationships of soils and vegetation in the forest–tundra ecotone, Upper Firth River Valley, Alaska–Canada. Among them European spruce sawfly, yellow-headed spruce sawfly, green-headed spruce sawfly and the spruce webspinning sawfly (Rose and Lindquist 1985).[119]. High variation in mineral soil exposure occurred both among stands and within stands; mineral soil exposure ranged from 0% to 100% among 10.8-feet² (1 m²) plots. The closed black spruce fire behavior fuel model (FBFM) Timber-Understory 3 (TU3) is characterized by high rates of spread and moderate flame lengths [112]. not seen). p. 154–178, Van Cleve, K.; Dyrness, R.; Viereck, L. 1980. The authors suggest that the cooler, wetter climate was countered by an increase in landscape flammability resulting from the replacement of poplar by white spruce [59]. 1965. Branch, Ottawa ON, Publ. 1949),[69] it is usually a minor species (Nienstaedt and Zasada 1990). On dry upland sites, especially south-facing slopes, the mature vegetation is white spruce, white birch, trembling aspen, or a combination of these species. ; Smith, R.H. 1959. 1961. Eastern forest cover types, Boreal Forest Region: white spruce. Sci. Nursery Hours. White spruce most commonly grows in the soil orders of Alfisols and Inceptisols. [127], P. glauca has three different genomes; a nuclear genome,[128] a mitochondrial genome,[129] and a plastid (i.e. p. 57–62. Compared to the Tanana River, Riley Creek is a lower volume river with a much narrower floodplain (i.e., it is not considered a "large river" in the LANDFIRE BpS 16150 series). Dyrness, C.T. A large-scale analysis of 371 stand ages in the approximately 89,000,000 acre (36,000,000 ha) Porcupine and Upper Yukon river drainages of eastern Alaska, found hardwood stands had the shortest fire-rotation interval (26 years), followed by black spruce (36 years), then white spruce (113 years); and fire-return intervals were estimated to be 30, 43, and 105 years for hardwood, black spruce, and white spruce stands, respectively. [29], White spruce bark is mostly less than 8 mm or 5⁄16 in (Hale 1955)[30] and not more than 9.5 mm or 3⁄8 in thick (Chang 1954). In 1984, the Alaska Interagency Fire Management Plan (AIFMP) prioritized suppression efforts across the state. Rep. FMR-X-32. (1986). [83] Soil fertility holds the key not just to white spruce growth but to the distribution of the species. "Uprooting in boreal spruce forests: long-term variation in disturbance rate. 1879)[62][63] and Scotland (United Kingdom Forestry Commission 1920). 1969. The authors suggest that fires are widespread on floodplains, except on islands [92]. LANDFIRE BpS models of the Western North American Boreal Treeline White Spruce Woodland-Boreal (16011 BpS series e.g., [75]) yield a MFRI of 104 years, which may be more frequent than documented by the scarce literature. Rowe, J.S. In the Fairbanks region, human-caused fires begin in March and continue through October, 2 months before and after the lightning-fire season [29]. Except in populated areas, the impact of fire suppression in interior Alaska may be relatively minor. USDA, For. 31 p. Krasowski, M.J.; Owens, J.N. I:1>–22. Some studies found very little evidence of fire in white spruce treeline communities (e.g., [27,49]). Res. (1951). [7] Topography, soil conditions, and glaciation may also be important in controlling northern limits of spruce (Drew and Shanks 1965).[53]. [7] Chlorosis was observed in young white spruce in heavily limed nursery soils at about pH 8.3 (Stone, cited by Nienstaedt 1957). Boreal forest: Because white spruce communities occur within a matrix of other forest types (e.g., black spruce, quaking aspen, paper birch), fire frequencies are difficult to distinguish from and strongly influenced by neighboring forest types. BTUs per cord of common wood in Alaska: Birch - 23.6 MMBtu / cord* White Spruce - 18.1 MMBtu / cord* Black Spruce - 15.9 MMBtu / cord* Cottonwood - 14.5 MMBtu / cord* *For Seasoned wood. Several white spruce communities have been identified in interior Alaska: white spruce/feathermoss; white spruce/dwarf birch/feathermoss; white spruce/dwarf birch/sphagnum; white spruce/avens/moss; and white spruce/alder/bluejoint (Viereck 1975, Dyrness 1980). [121], A number of sawflies feed on spruce trees. White spruce grows from sea level to about 1520 m (5,000 ft) elevation. The tree leans uphill, and its trunk is 45 inches around. For. Recently I've heard folks say that we are the "big corporate" trailer dealership that doesn't help the local economy. [7], Podzolized, brunisolic, luvisolic, gleysolic, and regosolic (immature) soils are typical of those supporting white spruce throughout the range of the species (Nienstaedt 1957). On the Eureka Creek Fire, satellite imagery showed that fire severity was predominantly moderate (47%) and high (40.9%) in the closed coniferous forest (white and black spruce) and predominately moderate (60.2%) for open coniferous forests [40]. The fire season in interior Alaska is typically short due to mid- to late-summer precipitation; July and August are the wettest months [113]. Compared with nearby black spruce forests, white spruce floodplain forests likely experience less frequent fire. Fire-scarred trees and stand age distributions suggest that some black and white spruce-lichen woodlands burned twice in the past 150 years, but the absence of trees with multiple scars precludes quantifying a precise fire-return interval. Fire ignition 1938. Human-caused ignitions occurred most frequently in May and extended the fire season by about 2 months [30], (see CONTEMPORARY CHANGES IN FIRE REGIMES: Causes of Ignition and Fire Size). Within the Gilles Creek Fire, deciduous vegetation made up a large proportion of the low severity and unburned patches within the fire, and may have stopped fire spread from black and white spruce stands [107]. Ages of 200 to 300 years are commonly attained throughout much of the range, and Dallimore and Jackson (1961)[25] estimated the normal lifespan of white spruce at 250 to 300 years. White spruce cone and seed production in interior Alaska, 1957–68. [45] Sargent (1922)[38] and Harlow and Harrar (1950)[28] also included Vermont and New Hampshire; and, while Dame and Brooks (1901)[54] excluded New York and states further west, they included Massachusetts as far south as Amherst and Northampton, “probably the southern limit of the species” in that area. White spruce 6 to 10 m (20 to 33 ft) high on the shore of Urquhart Lake, Northwest Territories, were found to be more than 300 years old (Hare and Ritchie 1972),[26], The bark of mature white spruce is scaly or flaky, grey-brown (Brayshaw 1960)[27] or ash-brown (Harlow and Harrar 1950),[28] but silvery when freshly exposed. Prefire organic soil horizons were deeper in black spruce than white spruce-quaking aspen stands, but they were also wetter and less dense. It is the state tree of South Dakota and provincial tree of Manitoba. In white spruce and black spruce treeline stands in the southern Brooks Range, postfire recruitment dynamics suggest that white spruce would replace black spruce if fire-return intervals were sufficiently long. Two studies suggest that fires occur in white spruce floodplain forests more frequently than otherwise assumed. 1 p. Zasada, J.C.; Van Cleve, K.; Werner, R.A.; McQueen, J.A. Deeper and drier organic layers encourage more intense surface fires and longer, deeper burning ground fires, which result in more complete consumption [38]. porsildii Raup has been credited with having smooth resin-blistered bark (Hosie 1969). Syntheses of fire regimes of associated boreal forests types (i.e., black spruce, quaking aspen and balsam poplar) are available in FEIS. The average weight per individual seed varies from 1.1 mg to 3.2 mg (Hellum 1976, Zasada et al. For. Res. "Site-index/soil relationships for white spruce in Alberta mixedwoods." 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