Research Database
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Evidence for strong bottom-up controls on fire severity during extreme events
Year: 2025
BackgroundRecord fire years in recent decades have challenged post-fire forest recovery in the western United States and beyond. To improve management responses, it is critical that we understand the conditions under which management can mitigate severe wildfire impacts, and when it cannot. Here, we evaluated the influence of top-down and bottom-up fire severity forcings on 17 wildfires occurring during two consecutive record-setting years in the eastern Cascade Mountains of Washington State. Despite much of the area having been burned after an extended period of fire…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fire History, Fuels and Fuel Treatments, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
Publication Type: Journal Article
Extreme Weather Magnifies the Effects of Forest Structure on Wildfire, Driving Increased Severity in Industrial Forests
Year: 2025
Despite widespread concern over increases in wildfire severity, the mechanisms underlying this trend remain unclear, hampering our ability to mitigate the severity of future fires. There is substantial uncertainty regarding the relative roles of extreme weather conditions, which are exacerbated by climate change, and forest management, in particular differences between private industrial timber companies and public land agencies. To investigate the effects of extreme weather and forest management on fire severity, we used light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data to characterize pre-fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A Negative Fire–Vegetation Feedback Substantially Limits Reburn Extent Across the North American Boreal Biome
Year: 2025
The North American boreal biome (NAB) is warming at 2–4 times the mean global rate, contributing to increasing wildfire activity. The degree to which this trend alters biome-level feedbacks to global climate depends on how strongly bottom-up feedbacks between fire and vegetation dampen the effects of climate drivers. As young vegetation recovering from fire covers a growing portion of the landscape, it could resist reburning, buffering against further increases in fire. Resistance to reburning could be particularly strong in the NAB, where slow post-fire fuel accumulation is sometimes…
Publication Type: Journal Article