Research Database
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7
High-severity fire drives persistent floristic homogenization in human-altered forests
Year: 2023
Ecological disturbance regimes across the globe are being altered via direct and indirect human influences. Biodiversity loss at multiple scales can be a direct outcome of these shifts. Fire, especially in dry forests, is an ecological disturbance that is experiencing dramatic changes due to climate change, fire suppression, increased human population in fire-prone areas, and alterations to vegetation composition and structure. Dry western conifer forests that historically experienced frequent, low-severity fires are now increasingly burning at high severity. Relatively little work has been…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fuel Profiles and Biomass Carbon Following Bark Beetle Outbreaks: Insights for Disturbance Interactions from a Historical Silvicultural Experiment
Year: 2023
Anticipating consequences of disturbance interactions on ecosystem structure and function is a critical management priority as disturbance activity increases with warming climate. Across the Northern Hemisphere, extensive tree mortality from recent bark beetle outbreaks raises concerns about potential fire behavior and post-fire forest function. Silvicultural treatments (that is, partial or complete cutting of forest stands) may reduce outbreak severity and subsequent fuel loads, but longevity of pre-outbreak treatment effects on outbreak severity and post-outbreak fuel profiles remains…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The century-long shadow of fire exclusion: Historical data reveal early and lasting effects of fire regime change on contemporary forest composition
Year: 2023
Historical logging practices and fire exclusion have reduced the proportion of pine in mixed-conifer forests of the western United States. To better understand pine’s decline, we investigate the impact of historical logging on the tree regeneration layer and subsequent stand development over almost a century of fire exclusion. We use a unique dataset derived from contemporary (∼2016) remeasurement of 440 historical quadrats (∼4m2) in the central Sierra Nevada, California, in which overstory trees, tree regeneration, and microsite conditions were measured and mapped both before and after…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Indigenous Fire Futures
Year: 2023
Dominant causal explanations of the wildfire threat in California include anthropogenic climate change, fire suppression, industrial logging, and the expansion of residential settlements, which are all products of settler colonial property regimes and structures of resource extraction. Settler colonialism is grounded in Indigenous erasure and dispossession through militarism and incarceration, which are prominent tools in California's fire industrial complex. To challenge settler colonial frameworks within fire management, Indigenous peoples are organizing to expand Indigenous cultural…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Using culturally significant birds to guide the timing of prescribed fires in the Klamath Siskiyou Bioregion
Year: 2023
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 through the implementation of prescribed fires within habitats that are used by a diversity of migrant and resident land birds. While many bird species may benefit from habitat enhancements associated with wildfires, cultural burning, and prescribed fire, individuals may face direct or indirect harm.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Exceptional variability in historical fire regimes across a western Cascades landscape, Oregon, USA
Year: 2023
Detailed information about the historical range of variability in wildfire activity informs adaptation to future climate and disturbance regimes. Here, we describe one of the first annually resolved reconstructions of historical (1500–1900 ce) fire occurrence in coast Douglas-fir dominated forests of the west slope of the Cascade Range in western Oregon. Mean fire return intervals (MFRIs) across 16 sites within our study area ranged from 6 to 165 years. Variability in MFRIs was strongly associated with average maximum summer vapor pressure deficit. Fire occurred infrequently in Douglas-fir…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fire History, Mixed-Conifer Management, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
Publication Type: Journal Article
Solastalgia to Soliphilia: Cultural Fire, Climate Change, and Indigenous Healing
Year: 2023
Wildly destructive fires, wind driven through unmanaged and untended lands, take lives and homes and the solace of familiar places. Ash blankets the remains, trauma takes hold, but even when the smoke clears and communities begin to heal, there is a loss beyond words. These wildfires reveal the ways many are lacking relationships with the land. Without good relationships with our environments, we worsen the health of land, plants, and animals. In this article, we foreground the experiential richness of storytelling as we build upon previous publications in Ecopsychology, further…
Publication Type: Journal Article