Research Database

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Trees have similar growth responses to first-entry fires and reburns following long-term fire exclusion

Year: 2024

Managing fire ignitions for resource benefit decreases fuel loads and reduces the risk of high-severity fire in fire-suppressed dry conifer forests. However, the reintroduction of low-severity wildfire can injure trees, which may decrease their growth after fire. Post-fire growth responses could change from first-entry fires to reburns, as first-entry fires reduce fuel loads and the vulnerability among trees to fire effects, which may result in trees sustaining less damage during reburns. To determine whether trees had growth responses that varied from first-entry fires to reburns, we cored…

Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fuels and Fuel Treatments

dendroecology, reburn, fire severity, managed wildfire, fire effects

Publication Type: Journal Article

Pre-contact Indigenous fire stewardship: a research framework and application to a Pacific Northwest temperate rainforest

Year: 2024

Fire is a key disturbance process that shapes the structure and function of montane temperate rainforest in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Recent research is revealing more frequent historical fire activity in the western central Cascades than expected by conventional theory. Indigenous peoples have lived in the PNW for millennia. However, Indigenous people's roles in shaping vegetation mosaics in montane temperate forests of the PNW has been overlooked, despite archaeological evidence of long-term, continuous human use of these landscapes. In this paper, we present a generalizable research…

Fire History, Fuels and Fuel Treatments

montane forests, Indigenous fire stewardship, historical fire regime, dendroecology

Publication Type: Journal Article

Changing fire regimes and nuanced impacts on a critically imperiled species

Year: 2024

Wildfire activity throughout western North America is increasing which can have important consequences for species persistence. Native species have evolved disturbance-adapted traits that confer resilience to natural disturbance provided disturbances operate within their historical range of variability. This resilience can erode as disturbance regimes change and begin operating outside this range. We assessed wildfire impacts during 1987–2018 on the northern spotted owl, an imperiled species with complex relationships with late and early seral forest in the Pacific Northwest, USA. We analyzed…

Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fire History, Fish and Wildlife Habitat

northern spotted owl, wildlife habitat, disturbance regime

Publication Type: Journal Article