Phillip van Mantgem
Biography
EDUCATION
- Ph.D., Ecology, University of California, Davis, CA 2001
- M.S., Plant Biology, University of California, Davis, CA 1996
- B.S., Botany, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA 1991
RESEARCH INTERESTS
- Conservation biology
- Fire ecology
- Forest ecology
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
- Research Ecologist, USGS, Redwood Field Station, Arcata, CA, 2008 - Present
- Ecologist, USGS, Sequoia and Kings Canyon Field Station, Three Rivers, CA, 2000 - 2008
Science and Products
WERC Fire Science
WERC scientists are defining the past, present, and future of wildfires for wildlife and human communities. Explore this webpage to learn about specific, ongoing projects across California and parts of Nevada.
Understanding Fire-caused Vegetation Type Conversion in Southwestern Conifer Forests under Current and Future Climate Conditions
Fire size, frequency, overall area burned, and severity are increasing across many vegetation types in the southwestern U.S. In many cases, large contiguous areas are burning repeatedly at high severity, triggering vegetation type conversions (VTC), where once-dominant coniferous forests fail to return to their pre-fire state, often transitioning to shrub- or grass-dominated systems. Loss of...
Drought and Western Forests
USGS WERC's Dr. Phil van Mantgem and his collaborators are using plot-based methods to describe change and vulnerability to drought in the forests of the western United States. A focus of this work is the installation and maintenance of large (1 ha) monitoring plots. Many other vegetation monitoring strategies are based on small (0.1 ha) plots, which may not be sufficient to detect changes in...
Forest Restoration in the Western U.S.
This project uses new and existing field data to assess forest restoration treatment effects across broad spatial and temporal scales. WERC's Dr. Phil van Mantgem and project partners are considering the effects of restoration treatments in terms of forest structure, forest stand development, subsequent tree mortality patterns mortality, and how climate influences the success or failure of...
Fire Severity Trends in the Western U.S.
How will increased drought affect forest fire severity? WERC’s Dr. Phil van Mantgem is testing the idea increased drought stress may affect forest fire severity independent of fire intensity. Drought stress prior to fire can affect tree health, potentially resulting in a higher sensitivity to fire-induced damage. Thus, with drought there may be ongoing increases in fire severity (the number of...
Redwood Field Station
The Redwood Field Station is located in Arcata, CA. Click on the following tab to learn more.
Characterizing a link in the terrestrial carbon cycle: a global overview of individual tree mass growth
Forests sequester the majority of the terrestrial biosphere’s carbon and are key components of the global carbon cycle, potentially contributing substantial feedbacks to ongoing climatic changes. It is therefore remarkable that no consensus yet exists about the fundamental nature of tree mass growth (and thus carbon sequestration rate). Specifically, does tree mass growth rate increase,...
Pre‐fire drought and competition mediate post‐fire conifer mortality in western U.S. National Parks
Tree mortality is an important outcome of many forest fires. Extensive tree injuries from fire may lead directly to mortality, but environmental and biological stressors may also contribute to tree death. However, there is little evidence showing how the combined effects of two common stressors, drought and competition, influence post‐fire...
van Mantgem, Phillip J.; Falk, Donald A.; Williams, Emma C.; Das, Adrian J.; Stephenson, Nathan L. Thinning, tree-growth, and resistance to multi-year drought in a mixed-conifer forest of northern California
Drought is an important stressor in forest ecosystems that can influence tree vigor and survival. In the U.S., forest managers use two primary management techniques to promote resistance and resilience to drought: prescribed fire and mechanical thinning. Generally applied to reduce fuels and fire hazard, treatments may also reduce competition for...
Vernon, Michael J.; Sherriff, Rosemary L.; van Mantgem, Phillip J.; Kane, Jeffrey M. Characterizing interactions between fire and other disturbances and their impacts on tree mortality in western U.S. Forests
Increasing evidence that pervasive warming trends are altering disturbance regimes and their interactions with fire has generated substantial interest and debate over the implications of these changes. Previous work has primarily focused on conditions that promote non-additive interactions of linked and compounded disturbances, but the spectrum of...
Kane, Jeffrey M.; Varner, J. Morgan; Metz, Margaret R.; van Mantgem, Phillip J. Higher sensitivity and lower specificity in post-fire mortality model validation of 11 western US tree species
Managers require accurate models to predict post-fire tree mortality to plan prescribed fire treatments and examine their effectiveness. Here we assess the performance of a common post-fire tree mortality model with an independent dataset of 11 tree species from 13 National Park Service units in the western USA. Overall model discrimination was...
Kane, Jeffrey M.; van Mantgem, Phillip J.; Lalemand, Laura; Keifer, MaryBeth Growth of coast redwood and Douglas-fir following thinning in second-growth forests at Redwood National Park and Headwaters Forest Reserve
Managers of second-growth forests at Redwood National Park and the Bureau of Land Management’s Headwaters Forest Reserve encourage the development of late seral forest characteristics using mechanical thinning, where competing vegetation is removed to promote growth of residual trees. Yet the ability to quantify and reliably predict outcomes of...
van Mantgem, Phillip J.; Teraoka, Jason R.; LaFever, David H.; Lalemand, Laura Forest restoration at Redwood National Park: exploring prescribed fire alternatives to second-growth management: a case study
Almost half of Redwood National Park is comprised of second-growth forests characterized by high stand density, deficient redwood composition, and low understory biodiversity. Typical structure of young redwood stands impedes the recovery of old-growth conditions, such as dominance of redwood (Sequoia sempervirens (D. Don) Endl.), distinct canopy...
Engber, Eamon; Teraoka, Jason; van Mantgem, Phillip J. Low thinning and crown thinning of two severities as restoration tools at Redwood National Park
Interest in the restoration of second-growth forests has continued to increase in the redwood region, which has further increased the importance of evaluating restoration-based silvicultural strategies. This study assessed the short-term effectiveness of four silvicultural treatments (two silvicultural thinning methods, low thinning and crown...
Teraoka, Jason R; van Mantgem, Phillip J.; Keyes, Christopher R. The relative contributions of disease and insects in the decline of a long-lived tree: a stochastic demographic model of whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis)
Pathogens and insect pests have become increasingly important drivers of tree mortality in forested ecosystems. Unfortunately, understanding the relative contributions of multiple mortality agents to the population decline of trees is difficult, because it requires frequent measures of tree survival, growth, and recruitment, as well as the...
Jules, Erik S; Jackson, Jenell I.; van Mantgem, Phillip J.; Beck, Jennifer S.; Murray, Michael P.; Sahara, E. April Duration of fuels reduction following prescribed fire in coniferous forests of U.S. national parks in California and the Colorado Plateau
Prescribed fire is a widely used forest management tool, yet the long-term effectiveness of prescribed fire in reducing fuels and fire hazards in many vegetation types is not well documented. We assessed the magnitude and duration of reductions in surface fuels and modeled fire hazards in coniferous forests across nine U.S. national parks in...
van Mantgem, Phillip J.; Lalemand, Laura; Keifer, MaryBeth; Kane, Jeffrey M. Does prescribed fire promote resistance to drought in low elevation forests of the Sierra Nevada, California, USA?
Prescribed fire is a primary tool used to restore western forests following more than a century of fire exclusion, reducing fire hazard by removing dead and live fuels (small trees and shrubs). It is commonly assumed that the reduced forest density following prescribed fire also reduces competition for resources among the remaining trees, so...
van Mantgem, Phillip J.; Caprio, Anthony C.; Stephenson, Nathan L.; Das, Adrian J. Increasing elevation of fire in the Sierra Nevada and implications for forest change
Fire in high-elevation forest ecosystems can have severe impacts on forest structure, function and biodiversity. Using a 105-year data set, we found increasing elevation extent of fires in the Sierra Nevada, and pose five hypotheses to explain this pattern. Beyond the recognized pattern of increasing fire frequency in the Sierra Nevada since the...
Schwartz, Mark W.; Butt, Nathalie; Dolanc, Christopher R.; Holguin, Andrew; Moritz, Max A.; North, Malcolm P.; Safford, Hugh D.; Stephenson, Nathan L.; Thorne, James H.; van Mantgem, Phillip J. The influence of prefire tree growth and crown condition on postfire mortality of sugar pine following prescribed fire in Sequoia National Park
Tree mortality is a vital component of forest management in the context of prescribed fires; however, few studies have examined the effect of prefire tree health on postfire mortality. This is especially relevant for sugar pine (Pinus lambertiana Douglas), a species experiencing population declines due to a suite of anthropogenic factors....
Nesmith, Jonathan C. B.; Das, Adrian J.; O'Hara, Kevin L.; van Mantgem, Phillip J.
SneakPeek: USGS Public Lecture, Can Our Western Forests Take the Heat?
- Tree death rates have more than doubled over the last few decades in old-growth forests of our western states, possibly reflecting increasing temperatures, with potentially serious consequences for wildlife, fire risks, and the global carbon cycle
- Rising regional temperatures have lengthened the summer drought, likely stressing trees and leading to higher