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While management may not be able to alter long-term changes in climate, climate variability provides trigger points at which management actions can mitigate the potential invasives trajectory through responding to mechanisms and initiate a different trajectory toward maintaining native or other desired ecotypes. For example, while temperatures are predicted to warm across the deserts of the western United States, winters in which temperatures drop below freezing for several consecutive days may be good years for management to scale up eradication programs of weakened cold-intolerant invasive species. Likewise, a pluvial winter may produce an abundance of annual grasses while also raising fuel moistures in desirable natives, and prescribed fire programs may be able to capitalize on windows of opportunity for burning tracts of invasive annual grasses without damaging succulent native species. Projected increases in the frequency and onset of extreme fire danger across the region will likely dramatically increase mortality rates of native species less adapted to wildfire and make proactive reduction of invasive fuel loads all the more important.
Publication
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Management Options
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Forests and Ecosystems
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Invasive Species
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Invasive Plants: Terrestrial
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West
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Although numerous processes other than climate change may be the driving force behind local invasions [in western US deserts], we hypothesize here that climate change represents an additional large-scale pressure that may hasten the rate of change both by increasing the frequency of disturbance catalysts to invasion and producing conditions more conducive to establishment. Model results suggest a number of ways in which physical factors may favor such a scenario: 1) increases in the length of growing season and decrease in episodic cold mortality events, 2) changes in the frequency of moisture anomalies and precipitation type, and 3) increases in the frequency of conditions conducive to large fire potential.
Publication
(1)
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Effects
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Forests and Ecosystems
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Invasive Species
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Invasive Plants: Terrestrial
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West
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v3.2
