The Black Hills, Bear Lodge Mountains, and Devils Tower - Mountains and Plains: The Ecology of Wyoming Landscapes - page 277

Fig. 16.11. this stand of ponderosa pine
has been thinned and is now thought
to be less susceptible to crown fires than
before. Because the small trees had little
market value, most of them were piled
and burned.

considering the Black Hills region as a whole, the
largest fire in recorded history occurred in and around
Jewel cave national Monument in August 2000, follow-
ing an extended dry period. Known as the Jasper Fire,
it was of mixed severity and burned about 84,000 acres.
Some of the forest had surface fires, other parts had
intensive crown fires, and still other areas did not burn
at all. A patchy mosaic was created, with tree mortali-
ties of about 20, 50, and 100 percent in areas of low,
moderate, and high burn severity, respectively. 44 n ew
tree seedlings are becoming established—though slowly
where burn severity was high, probably because most
of the ponderosa seed supply was burned. Some under-

story plants increased in abundance, such as snowberry,
yarrow, sideoats grama, needle-and-thread grass, cana-
dian horseweed, and cudweed sagewort; others became
less abundant, such as common juniper, little bluestem,
and ninebark. Unfortunately but predictably, several
introduced species became more common as well, most
notably, bull thistle, canada thistle, leafy spurge, and
Russian and spotted knapweed.

Mountain Pine Beetles and Flammability

Land management issues associated with insects, dis-
eases, and invasive plants are the same as those encoun-