Daniel B. Fagre, Ph.D. (Former Employee)

Mountain systems are characterized by strong environmental gradients, rugged topography and extreme spatial heterogeneity in ecosystem structure and composition. Consequently, most mountainous areas have relatively high rates of endemism and biodiversity, and function as species refugia in many areas of the world. Mountains have long been recognized as critical entities in regional...

The National Park Service of the United States has 388 designated protected areas and parks that include historic and cultural sites as well as ‘natural resource’ parks set aside for their unique and outstanding natural features. Early efforts to create parks were focused on areas of beauty or unusual features but later efforts increasingly aimed to protect biodiversity and intact...

In January 2004, two natural avalanches (destructive class 3) derailed a freight train in John F. Stevens Canyon, on the southern boundary of Glacier National Park. The railroad tracks were closed for 29 hours due to cleanup and lingering avalanche hazard, backing up 112km of trains and shutting down Amtrak’s passenger service. The incident marked the fourth time in three winters that...

An integrated program of ecosystem modeling and field studies in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest (U.S.A.) has quantified many of the ecological processes affected by climatic variability. Paleoecological and contemporary ecological data in forest ecosystems provided model parameterization and validation at broad spatial and temporal scales for tree growth, tree regeneration and...

The current ecological condition of the Rocky Mountains can be viewed from two somewhat opposing perspectives. The first is that human occupation has had relatively little effect on the Rockies: large natural, if not pristine, areas remain, and the region's open spaces provide wildlife habitat, majestic scenery, and a sense of wildness. Unlike the situation in, say, the Swiss Alps, where...

Nutrient dynamics in watersheds have been used as an ecosystem-level indicator of overall ecosystem function or response to disturbance (e.g. Borman.N et al. 1974, WEBSTER et al. 1992). The examination of nutrients has been evaluated to determine responses to logging practices or other changes in watershed land use. Nutrient dynamics have been related to changing physical and biological