Post?landslide soil and vegetation recovery in a dry, montane system is slow and patchy

Landslides are common disturbances in forests around the world, and a major threat to human life property. likely become more many areas as storms intensify. Forest vegetation can improve hillslope stability via long, deep rooting across through failure planes. In U.S. Rocky Mountains, landslides infrequent but widespread when they do occur. They also extremely understudied, with little known about basic recovery processes rates of establishment which restabilize hills. This study presents first evaluation post-landslide on forested southern Mountains. Six years after landslide event, surveyed sites have very regeneration initiation zones, even controlling for soil coverage. Soils shallower less nitrogen rich zones well. Rooting depth was similar between functional groups regardless position slide, deep-rooting trees much zones. A lack post-disturbance tree these lower elevation, warm/dry settings, variety disturbance types, suggests that complete restabilization hillslopes is be slow or non-existent, especially climate warms. Replacement by grasses would protect against shallow instabilities not deeper mass movement events threaten