Landscape Level Interactions Among Ungulates, Vegetation, and Large-Scale Fires in Northern Yellowstone National Park

Abstract

Substantial progress has been made in both the modeling and field studies during the first six months of research funding. Yegang Wu, Jennifer O'Hara, and Michael O'Hara all began working full time for the project on September 1, 1990. Wu is based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and is working primarily on model development and analyses using the geographic information system (GIS) located in Yellowstone. The O'Hara's are based in Yellowstone and are working full time on the field studies. Here we describe our progress during the past six months for each main area of the proposed work: 1. field studies, including aspen (Populus tremuloides) and grassland sampling, and 2. model development and GIS analyses.