Research Database
Displaying 1 - 20 of 114
Prescribed fire, managed burning, and previous wildfires reduce the severity of a southwestern US gigafire
Year: 2025
In many parts of the western United States, wildfires are becoming larger and more severe, threatening the persistence of forest ecosystems. Understanding the ways in which management activities such as prescribed fire and managed wildfire can mitigate fire severity is essential for developing effective forest conservation strategies. We evaluated the effects of previous fuels reduction treatments, including prescribed fire and wildfire managed for resource benefit, and other wildfires on the burn severity of the 2022 Black Fire in southwestern New Mexico, USA. The Black Fire burned over 131,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Equity in resilience: a case study of community resilience to wildfire in southwestern Oregon, United States
Year: 2025
In the fire-prone and fire-adapted landscape of the Rogue River Basin of southwestern Oregon, communities mobilize to prepare, respond, and recover from wildfire while modifying the current social and ecological system. Marginalized communities are often most affected and least prepared for disturbances of this kind, where racism, colonialism, and structural equities prevent meaningful inclusion and equitable allocation of resources. This research centers these voices in an empirical study of the situated resilience of the Rogue River Basin, rooted in the work of community-based organizations…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Trailing edge contractions common in interior western US trees under varying disturbances
Year: 2025
As climate warms, trees are expected to track their ideal climate, referred to as ‘range shifts’; however, lags in tree range shifts are currently common. Disturbance events that kill trees may help catalyse tree migrations by removing biotic competition, but can also limit regeneration by eliminating seed sources, and it is unknown whether disturbance will facilitate or inhibit tree migrations in the face of climate change. Here we use national forest inventory data to show that seedlings of 15 dominant tree species in the interior western United States occupy historically cooler areas than…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Prescribed fire, managed burning, and previous wildfires reduce the severity of a southwestern US gigafire
Year: 2025
In many parts of the western United States, wildfires are becoming larger and more severe, threatening the persistence of forest ecosystems. Understanding the ways in which management activities such as prescribed fire and managed wildfire can mitigate fire severity is essential for developing effective forest conservation strategies. We evaluated the effects of previous fuels reduction treatments, including prescribed fire and wildfire managed for resource benefit, and other wildfires on the burn severity of the 2022 Black Fire in southwestern New Mexico, USA. The Black Fire burned over 131,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The 2023 wildfires in British Columbia, Canada: impacts, drivers, and transformations to coexist with wildfire
Year: 2025
In 2023, all regions of British Columbia (BC) experienced record-breaking fire weather and wildfires, with extreme behavior and social-ecological effects. In total, 2245 wildfires burned 2840 545 hectares. Contemporary wildfires are the culmination of a century of altered human–forest–wildfire relationships, exacerbated by climate change. Transformative change is urgently needed for the ecosystems and communities to be resilient to wildfire. We present six interrelated strategies needed to amplify the pace and scale of change in response to recent wildfire extremes: (1) Immediately diversify…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Long-term influence of prescribed burning on subsequent wildfire in an old-growth coast redwood forest
Year: 2025
Background: Prescribed burning is an effective tool for reducing fuels in many forest types, yet there have been few opportunities to study forest resilience to wildfire in areas previously treated. In 2020, a large-scale high-intensity wildfire burned through an old-growth coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) forest with a mixed land management history, providing a rare opportunity to compare early post-wildfire data between areas with and without previous application of prescribed burning. The purpose of this study was to analyze the differences between these two treatments in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fuel constraints, not fire weather conditions, limit fire behavior in reburned boreal forests
Year: 2024
Fire frequency in boreal forests has increased via longer burning seasons, drier conditions, and higher temperatures. However, fires have historically self-regulated via fuel limitations, mediating the effects of changes in climate and fire weather. Early post-fire boreal forests (10–15 years postfire) are often dominated by mixed conifer-broadleaf or broadleaf regeneration, considered less flammable due to the higher foliar moisture of broadleaf trees and shrubs compared to their more intact conifer counterparts. However, the strength of self-regulation in the context of changing fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Long-term frequent fire and cattle grazing alter dry forest understory vegetation
Year: 2024
Understanding fire and large herbivore interactions in interior western forests is critical, owing to the extensive and widespread co-occurrence of these two disturbance types and multiple present and future implications for forest resilience, conservation and restoration. However, manipulative studies focused on interactions and outcomes associated with these two disturbances are rare in forested rangelands. We investigated understory vegetation response to 5-year spring and fall prescribed fire and domestic cattle grazing exclusion in ponderosa pine stands and reported long-term responses,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Evacuation decisions of tourists in wildfire scenarios
Year: 2024
This paper investigates the factors affecting evacuation behaviour of tourists in wildfire scenarios by conducting a scoping review using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analysis approach - here using only its extension for scoping reviews. A total of 524 scientific papers were identified in the Web of Science and Scopus and 23 studies were fully reviewed. Key variables affecting the evacuation behaviour of tourists included property attachment, past experience and preparedness, safety culture, risk perception, individual and group socio-demographics, interaction…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Snow-cover remote sensing of conifer tree recovery in high-severity burn patches
Year: 2024
The number of large, high-severity wildfires has been increasing across the western United States over the last several decades. It is not fully understood how changes in the frequency of large, severe wildfires may impact the resilience of conifer forests, due to alterations in regeneration success or failure. Our research investigates 30 years of conifer recovery patterns within 34 high-severity wildfire complexes (1988–1991) of the Northern Rocky Mountains. We evaluate the capability of snow-cover Landsat to characterize conifer tree recolonization of high-severity burn patches. Snow-…
Publication Type: Journal Article
‘Mind the Gap’—reforestation needs vs. reforestation capacity in the western United States
Year: 2024
Tree establishment following severe or stand-replacing disturbance is critical for achieving U.S. climate change mitigation goals and for maintaining the co-benefits of intact forest ecosystems. In many contexts, natural post-fire tree regeneration is sufficient to maintain forest cover and associated ecosystem services, but increasingly the pattern and scale of disturbance exceeds ecological thresholds and active reforestation may be warranted. Our capacity to plant trees, however, is not keeping pace with reforestation needs. This shortfall is uniquely apparent in the western U.S., where…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Improving social resilience to forest fire from community perspective
Year: 2024
Recently, terms like social and community resilience have provided new ideas in reducing disaster risks especially in forest fire. However, a comprehensive and in-depth review of community social resilience concerning forest fires is lacking. There is little research investigate whether certain social or community resilience factors can initiate forest fires or whether forest fire prevention positively be influenced by them. To fill this gap, this paper aims to identify and discuss the factors influencing the occurrence of forest fires in the scope of community social resilience. It also…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Abiotic Factors Modify Ponderosa Pine Regeneration Outcomes After High-Severity Fire
Year: 2024
Large high-severity burn patches are increasingly common in southwestern US dry conifer forests. Seed-obligate conifers often fail to quickly regenerate large patches because their seeds rarely travel the distances required to reach core patch area. Abiotic factors may further alter the distance seeds can travel to regenerate a patch, which would change expected post-fire regeneration patterns. We used the presence and density of ponderosa pine regeneration as a proxy for seed dispersal to quantify the effect of abiotic factors on seed dispersal into high-severity patches. We established 45…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Patterns, drivers, and implications of postfire delayed tree mortality in temperate conifer forests of the western United States
Year: 2024
Conifer forest resilience may be threatened by increasing wildfire activity and compound disturbances in western North America. Fire refugia enhance forest resilience, yet may decline over time due to delayed mortality—a process that remains poorly understood at landscape and regional scales. To address this uncertainty, we used high-resolution satellite imagery (5-m pixel) to map and quantify delayed mortality of conifer tree cover between 1 and 5 years postfire, across 30 large wildfires that burned within three montane ecoregions in the western United States. We used statistical models to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Repeated fuel treatments fall short of fire-adapted regeneration objectives in a Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forest, USA
Year: 2024
Fire exclusion over the last two centuries has driven a significant fire deficit in the forests of western North America, leading to widespread changes in the composition and structure of these historically fire-adapted ecosystems. Fuel treatments have been increasingly applied over the last few decades to mitigate fire hazard, yet it is unclear whether these fuel-focused treatments restore the fire-adapted conditions and species that will allow forests to persist into the future. A vital prerequisite of restoring fire-adaptedness is ongoing establishment of fire-tolerant tree species, and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Optimising disaster response: opportunities and challenges with Uncrewed Aircraft System (UAS) technology in response to the 2020 Labour Day wildfires in Oregon, USA
Year: 2024
BackgroundThe expanding use of Uncrewed Aircraft System (UAS) technology in disaster response shows its immense potential to enhance emergency management. However, there is limited documentation on the challenges and data management procedures related to UAS operation.AimsThis manuscript documents and analyses the operational, technical, political, and social challenges encountered during the deployment of UAS, providing insights into the complexities of using these technologies in disaster situations.MethodsThis manuscript documents and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Thinning and Managed Burning Enhance Forest Resilience in Northeastern California
Year: 2024
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 the resilience of these forests to natural disturbances. One way to mitigate this problem is to use fuel treatments such as stand thinning and prescribed burning. In this study, we investigated changes in forest structure in the Lassen and Plumas National Forests of northern California following a large…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Montane springs provide regeneration refugia after high-severity wildfire
Year: 2024
In the mountainous regions of the Western United States, increasing wildfire activity and climate change are putting forests at risk of regeneration failure and conversion to non-forests. During periods with unfavorable climatic conditions, locations that are suitable for post-fire tree regeneration (regeneration refugia) may be essential for forest recovery. These refugia could provide scattered islands of recovering forest from which broader forest recovery may be facilitated. Spring ecosystems provide cool and wet microsites relative to the surrounding landscape and may act as regeneration…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Stand diversity increases pine resistance and resilience to compound disturbance
Year: 2024
BackgroundDrought, fire, and insects are increasing mortality of pine species throughout the northern temperate zone as climate change progresses. Tree survival may be enhanced by forest diversity, with growth rates often higher in mixed stands, but whether tree defenses are likewise aided remains in question. We tested how forest diversity-productivity patterns relate to growth and defense over three centuries of climate change, competition, wildfire, and bark beetle attack. We used detailed census data from a fully mapped 25.6-ha forest dynamics plot in California, USA to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Thinning and prescribed burning increase shade-tolerant conifer regeneration in a fire excluded mixed-conifer forest
Year: 2024
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 in extensive mortality of fire-adapted pine species. Thinning and prescribed fire are widely used in these forests to reduce fuels, moderate fire behavior, and restore ecosystems. Tree regeneration influences future forest composition and structure, and therefore future resilience to disturbances, but…
Publication Type: Journal Article