Trends In GYE

The long-term GYE forest recovery trend also differs by ownership. Forests on national forest land generally grow back faster than forests in national parks and wilderness areas. During the two decades following the catastrophic fires in 1988, national forests consistently had higher values of forest recovery than national parks and wilderness areas. Despite the short-term similarity to the wilderness areas in the first few years after the 1997 fires, forest recovery in the GYE national forests rapidly outpaced the rest of the GYE forests.
The recovery of the forests following major harvesting years in the GYE NFs (1985-1990, Figure 6c) exhibits the following trends. (1) The percentage of forest that recovered from a harvest in the GYE by year 2011 generally depends on the year of the harvest, and the recovery trajectory can be grouped into two recovery periods, before the late 1980s (the earlier years) and the late 1980s. (2) For harvests in the earlier years (1985 to 1987), over 85% of the harvested area has returned to forest by 2011. Harvests that occurred in late 1980s (1988 to 1990) have lower percentages of forest recovery than the early years, and the recovery trajectories differ between the two time periods. (3) For the earlier
The percentages of forest recovery reach 50-90% following the 1980s’ harvests, whereas the highest percent of forest recovery following the 1988 fires is less than 40% by the year of 2011. Even only considering the national forest land, post-harvest forest recovery rates (72% for harvests that occurred in 1988) are still much higher than the post-fire forest recovery rates (36% for fires that occurred in 1988) by year 2011. Further investigation into the potential causes of different forest recovery rates among different ownership and disturbance types is discussed in the following