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Climate and Landscape Controls on Old-Growth Western Juniper Demography in the Northern Great Basin, USA

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Abstract

Western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis Hook.) woodlands have persisted for millennia in semiarid parts of the northern Great Basin, USA, providing critical habitat for plant and animal species. Historical records suggest that the establishment of western juniper is strongly associated with regional climatic variability. For example, the abundance of western juniper pollen and macrofossils measured in lake sediment cores increased rapidly in the mid-1500s, concurrent with a regional increase in winter precipitation. However, little is known about how climatic factors interact with landscape structure to control the spatial distribution of western juniper at fine scales and at lower treelines. We used tree rings to reconstruct a spatially distributed history of establishment for 421 western juniper trees across 130 ha on Horse Ridge in central Oregon. Establishment occurred between 845 and 1961 CE, but most trees established after the mid-1550s. The pronounced sixteenth century pulse of establishment represents a transition from more open wooded shrublands to persistent woodlands and coincides with an increase in cool-season moisture and generally cool summer temperatures. Ancient trees that established before this were limited to certain microsites, suggesting that local topoedaphic conditions influenced juniper woodland demography and distributions, although we could not identify consistent environmental drivers. In the future, warmer and drier growing season conditions and a potential increase in wildfire activity may broadly limit western juniper recruitment and its distribution across the region, but at finer scales landscape features that buffer climate change impacts or provide fire safe niches may serve as refugia.

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Data availability

Our western juniper tree-ring dates and associated metadata are available from the USDA Forest Service Research Data Archive (Loehman and others 2022). The wood samples are available from the LTRR Collection at the Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, University of Arizona (https://collection.ltrr.arizona.edu/). The reconstruction of cool-season (Sep–Jun) total precipitation for Deschutes County, Oregon (Pederson 2022) is available from the USGS online at https://doi.org/10.5066/P9OC5BBT.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Richard F. Miller for help selecting the Horse Ridge site, planning and conducting field work, and advice on data analysis and interpretation. We thank Allissa L. Corrow, Brian Izbicki, James J. Mayes, and Jennifer T. Zalewski for help with field sampling; Ed Horne, Jenni Moffitt, Randy Hinson, Christopher Anthony, and Don Zalunardo for help describing the soil profiles; Lisa Holsinger for GIS support; Donald A. Falk for input during the early stages of sampling and analysis. This work was funded by the National Fire Plan, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Central Oregon Fire Management Service (Deschutes and Ochoco National Forests, Crooked River National Grassland, and Prineville District Bureau of Land Management), Forest Service Region 6, and The Nature Conservancy. Any use of trade, firm, or product names is for descriptive purposes only and does not imply endorsement by the US Government.

Funding

Central Oregon Fire Management Service, The Nature Conservancy, Forest Service Region 6, National Fire Plan.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alaska Science Center, US Geological Survey, 4210 University Drive, Anchorage, Alaska, 99508, USA

    Rachel A. Loehman

  2. Rocky Mountain Research Station, Fire Sciences Laboratory, USDA Forest Service, 5775 US West Highway 10, Missoula, Montana, 59808, USA

    Emily K. Heyerdahl

  3. Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center, U.S. Geological Survey, 2327 University Way, Bozeman, Montana, 59715, USA

    Gregory T. Pederson

  4. Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University, 226 Traphagen Hall, Bozeman, Montana, 59717, USA

    David McWethy

Authors
  1. Rachel A. Loehman
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  2. Emily K. Heyerdahl
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  3. Gregory T. Pederson
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  4. David McWethy
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rachel A. Loehman.

Additional information

Author contributions: EKH and RAL designed and conducted the study. EKH, GTP, and RAL analyzed tree-ring and environmental data and GTP reconstructed cool-season precipitation. All authors contributed to writing the paper.

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Loehman, R.A., Heyerdahl, E.K., Pederson, G.T. et al. Climate and Landscape Controls on Old-Growth Western Juniper Demography in the Northern Great Basin, USA. Ecosystems 26, 362–382 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-022-00762-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-022-00762-9

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