Topic: Prescribed Burning

Increased understanding of how mechanical thinning, prescribed burning, and wildfire affect subsequent wildfire severity is urgently needed as people and forests face a growing wildfire crisis. In response, we reviewed scientific literature for the US West and completed a meta-analysis that…

Trees use nonstructural carbohydrates (NSCs) to support many functions, including recovery from disturbances. However, NSC’s importance for recovery following fire and whether NSC depletion contributes to post-fire delayed mortality are largely unknown. We investigated how fire affects NSCs…

Understanding and quantifying the resilience of forests to disturbances are increasingly important for forest management. Historical fire suppression, logging, and other land uses have increased densities of shade tolerant trees and fuel buildup in the western United States, which has reduced…

Background

The capacity of forest fuel treatments to moderate the behavior and severity of subsequent wildfires depends on weather and fuel conditions at the time of burning. However, in-depth evaluations of how treatments perform are limited because encounters between wildfires and…

Fire exclusion and past management have altered the composition, structure, and function of frequent-fire forests throughout western North America. In mixed-conifer forests of the California Sierra Nevada, fire exclusion has exacerbated the effects of drought and endemic bark beetles, resulting…

Background

The decision making process undertaken during wildfire responses is complex and prone to uncertainty. In the US, decisions federal land managers make are influenced by numerous and often competing factors.

Aims

To assess and validate the presence of decision factors…

Background

Fire modulates herbivore dynamics in open ecosystems. While extensive work demonstrates the interaction between fire and vertebrate grazers, less research describes how grasshopper herbivory dynamics respond to fire.

Aim

We examined how fire increased grass crude…

Prescribed burning can mitigate extreme wildfire risk and reduce total smoke emissions. Yet prescribed burns’ emissions may also contribute to smoke exposures in nearby communities. Incorporating public health considerations into forest management planning efforts may help reduce prescribed burn…

Historically, wildfire and tribal burning practices played important roles in shaping ecosystems throughout the Klamath Siskiyou Bioregion of northern California and southern Oregon. Over the past several decades, there has been increased interest in the application of fire for forest management…

The increasing frequency of severe wildfires demands a shift in landscape management to mitigate their consequences. The role of managed, low-intensity fire as a driver of beneficial fuel treatment in fire-adapted ecosystems has drawn interest in both scientific and policy venues. Using a…