Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) is the most widespread pine species in North America; ranging from the Yukon to California’s Baja. The Latin part of its scientific name “contorta” refers to the twists ...

Lodgepole is very thin-barked and are easily killed by even low-intensity fires. That is why they have serotinous cones that open after a fire and reseed the area. Another threat to the species is ...

In 1988, a fire ecologist named Monica Turner clambered into a helicopter and soared over Yellowstone National Park’s still-smoldering forests. One fire after another had torched the park that ...

A few years after the Yellowstone fire of 1988, I was driving into the park from West Yellowstone. The blackened landscape was still almost ubiquitous, but there among the charred remains of forests a ...