Research Database
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Gazing into the flames: A guide to assessing the impacts of climate change on landscape fire
Year: 2026
Widespread impacts of landscape fire on ecosystems, societies, and the climate system itself have heightened the need to understand the potential future trajectory of fire under continued climate change. However, the complexity of fire makes climate change impact assessment challenging. The climate system influences fire in many ways, including through vegetation, fuel dryness, fire weather, and ignition. Furthermore, fire’s impacts are highly diverse, spanning threats to human and ecological values and beneficial ecosystem and cultural services. Here, we discuss the art and science of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Perspectives: The pace and scale challenge: Leveraging wildfire footprints to increase forest resilience to future high-severity fire
Year: 2025
In historically frequent fire forests, wildfires are burning larger areas and driving forest loss across western North America, yet they also produce extensive low- to moderate-severity effects that can be leveraged to harden landscapes against future high-severity fire. Here, we operationalize prior conceptual calls by presenting a framework that identifies opportunities to leverage recent wildfire footprints via three management pathways to increasing resistance to high-severity fire: create (use burned edges as containment lines to treat adjacent unburned forest), enhance…
Publication Type: Journal Article