Climate and disturbance forcing of episodic tree recruitment in a southwestern ponderosa pine landscape

Strong but relatively short (annual to decadal length) climate change can have broad‐scale and long‐lasting effects on forest communities. Climate impacts forests through direct effects on tree demography (mortality and overstory recruitment) and indirect effects on disturbance regimes. Here, we compare multicentury chronologies of tree recruitment from a 307‐ha ponderosa pine forest in southwestern Colorado to reconstructions of fire years, hydroclimate, and the El Niño‐Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Few trees predate a regional multiyear megadrought centered in the 1580s. A prolonged pluvial in the early1600s resulted in a pulse of tree recruitment that corresponds to recruitment seen over much of the Southwest. Other cohorts in the early 1700s and mid‐1800s established during multidecadal fire‐quiescent periods. These periods correspond to shifts in ENSO that apparently resulted in dampening of interannual wet/dry oscillations responsible for fuel buildup and drying. Fires, mediated by stochastic climate variation, acted as a density‐independent regulation on tree populations since establishment was not limited by overstory tree density, but rather by fire‐caused mortality of seedlings and saplings during periods of more frequent fires. Even‐aged cohorts in ponderosa pine forests likely have little if anything to do with episodic mortality caused by more severe fires, but rather relate mainly to episodic recruitment opportunities. Fire cessation after Euro‐American settlement in the late 1800s resulted in an increase in tree density and changes in forest composition, which are major factors that have contributed to recent severe wildfires in other Southwestern forests. Our results document clear linkages between synoptic climate forcing, fires, and recruitment episodes, and highlight the importance of regional historical processes on contemporary forest composition and structure.