Topic: Fire Effects and Fire Ecology

In the United States, many decision support tools exist to provide fire managers with weather and fire behaviour information to inform and facilitate risk-based decision-making. Relatively little is known about how managers use these tools in the field and when and how they may serve to…

Several recent studies have documented how fire severity affects the density and spatial patterns of tree regenerationin western North American ponderosa pine forests. However, less is known about the effects of fireseverity on fine-scale tree regeneration niche attributes such as understory…

Dendroecological studies of historical tree recruitment patterns suggest mixed‐severity fire effects are common in Douglas‐fir/western hemlock forests of the Pacific Northwest (PNW), USA, but empirical studies linking observed fire severity to tree regeneration response are needed to expand our…

Disturbance refugia – locations that experience less severe or frequent disturbances than the surrounding landscape – provide a framework to highlight not only where and why these biological legacies persist as adjacent areas change but also the value of those legacies in sustaining biodiversity…

Context Fire regimes in many dry forests of western North America are substantially different from historical conditions, and there is concern about the ability of these forests to recover following severe wildfire. Fire refugia, unburned or low-severity burned patches where trees survived fire…

Previously burned areas can influence the occurrence, extent, and severity of subsequent wildfires, which may influence expenditures on large fires. We develop a conceptual model of how interactions of fires with previously burned areas may influence fire management, fire behavior, expenditures…

Previous attempts to identify the environmental factors associated with firefighter entrapments in the United States have suggested that there are several common denominators. Despite the widespread acceptance of the assumed commonalities, few studies have quantified how often entrapments…

Forest land managers rely on predictions of tree mortality generated from fire behavior models to identify stands for post-fire salvage and to design fuel reduction treatments that reduce mortality. A key challenge in improving the accuracy of these predictions is selecting appropriate wind and…

To develop effective long-term strategies, natural resource managers need to account for the projected effects of climate change as well as the uncertainty inherent in those projec- tions. Vegetation models are one important source of projected climate effects. We explore results and associated…

Background: Wildfires, like many disturbances, can be catalysts for ecosystem change. Given projected climate change, tree regeneration declines and ecosystem shifts following severe wildfires are predicted. We reviewed scientific literature on post-fire tree regeneration to understand where and…