Research Database
Displaying 1 - 20 of 25
Lizards' response to the sound of fire is modified by fire history
Year: 2023
Highlights • Lizards surviving wildfires are more alert to fire sound than those in unburned areas. • Lizards living in urban areas reacted to fire sound similarly to wildfire survivors. • Both natural and human-driven disturbances can shape the behaviour of animals. • Fires are likely to be an important selective pressure on animal behaviour. Many animals survive wildfires; however, the mechanisms used to detect and respond to fire have been poorly studied. Sensory cues like sight and sound are used to recognize threats (e.g. predators) and elicit escape responses in prey. Similarly, these…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Contrasting effects of urbanization and fire on understory plant communities in the natural and wildland–urban interface
Year: 2023
As human populations expand and land-use change intensifies, terrestrial ecosystems experience concurrent disturbances (e.g., urbanization and fire) that may interact and compound their effects on biodiversity. In the urbanizing landscapes of the southern Appalachian region of the United States of America (US), fires in mesic forests have become more frequent in recent years. However, 80 years of forest management practices aimed at fire suppression in this region may have decreased landscape resistance or resilience to high-severity fires. At the same time, housing development is rapidly…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A firebreak placement model for optimizing biodiversity protection at landscape scale
Year: 2023
A solution approach is proposed to optimize the selection of landscape cells for inclusion in firebreaks. It involves linking spatially explicit information on a landscape’s ecological values, historical ignition patterns and fire spread behavior. A firebreak placement optimization model is formulated that captures the tradeoff between the direct loss of biodiversity due to the elimination of vegetation in areas designated for placement of firebreaks and the protection provided by the firebreaks from losses due to future forest fires. The optimal solution generated by the model reduced…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Making choices: prioritising the protection of biodiversity in wildfires
Year: 2023
Biodiversity is in chronic decline, and extreme events – such as wildfires – can add further episodes of acute losses. Fires of increasing magnitude will often overwhelm response capacity, and decision-makers need to make choices about what to protect. Conventionally, such choices prioritise human life then infrastructure then biodiversity. Based on shortcomings revealed in the 2019–20 Australian wildfires, we propose a series of linked steps that can be used to identify and prioritise biodiversity assets (including their priority relative to other types of assets), enhance and implement…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The eco-evolutionary role of fire in shaping terrestrial ecosystems
Year: 2023
1. Fire is an inherently evolutionary process, even though much more emphasis has been given to ecological responses of plants and their associated communities to fire. 2. Here, we synthesize contributions to a Special Feature entitled ‘Fire as a dynamic ecological and evolutionary force’ and place them in a broader context of fire research. Topics covered in this Special Feature include a perspective on the im-pacts of novel fire regimes on differential forest mortality, discussions on new ap-proaches to investigate vegetation-fire feedbacks and resulting plant syndromes,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A roadmap for pyrodiversity science
Year: 2023
Background
Contemporary and projected shifts in global fire regimes highlight the importance of understanding how fire affects ecosystem function and biodiversity across taxa and geographies. Pyrodiversity, or heterogeneity in fire history, is often an important driver of biodiversity, though it has been largely overlooked until relatively recently. In this paper, we synthesise previous research to develop a theoretical framework on pyrodiversity–biodiversity relationships and propose future research and conservation management directions.
Theoretical Framework
Pyrodiversity may affect…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Acorn woodpecker movements and social networks change with wildfire smoke
Year: 2023
Climate change has contributed to increased wildfires. Wildfire smoke exposes wildlife to hazards and mortality from particulate matter on a scale larger than the area impacted by fire. Using automated radiotelemetry, we illustrate how smoky conditions are associated with changes in behavior of acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus), a…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire-driven animal evolution in the Pyrocene
Year: 2023
Fire regimes are a major agent of evolution in terrestrial animals. Changing fire regimes and the capacity for rapid evolution in wild animal populations suggests the potential for rapid, fire-driven adaptive animal evolution in the Pyrocene. Fire drives multiple modes of evolutionary change, including stabilizing, directional, disruptive, and fluctuating selection, and can strongly influence gene flow and genetic drift. Ongoing and future research in fire-driven animal evolution will benefit from further development of generalizable hypotheses, studies conducted in highly responsive taxa,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Homeowner firewise behaviors in fire-prone central Oregon: An exploration of the attitudinal, situational, and cultural worldviews impacting pre-fire mitigation actions Author links open overlay panel
Year: 2023
Highlights • People with egalitarian cultural traits are more likely to engage in fire mitigation behaviors. • Concern, experience, and proximity all have a positive relationship to engagement in fire mitigation behaviors. • Fire-resistant building materials and landscaping requirements are effective policy tools for homeowner mitigation actions. • Younger homeowners and women are more likely to engage in fire mitigation actions. Abstract As a result of climate change and past management practices, wildfires are becoming larger and occurring more frequently than ever before in the Western U.S…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Factors influencing ember accumulation near a building
Year: 2023
Background: Embers, also known as firebrands, are the leading cause of building ignition during wildland–urban fires. This is attributed both to direct ignition of material on, in, or attached to the building, and indirect ignition where they ignite vegetation or other combustible material near the building, which results in a radiant heat and/or direct flame contact exposure that ignites the building. Indirect ignition of a building can occur when embers accumulate on and ignite nearby combustible fuel, resulting in radiant heat or flame constant exposure. Aims/implications: Factors that…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Identifying building locations in the wildland–urban interface before and after fires with convolutional neural networks
Year: 2023
Background: Wildland–urban interface (WUI) maps identify areas with wildfire risk, but they are often outdated owing to the lack of building data. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) can extract building locations from remote sensing data, but their accuracy in WUI areas is unknown. Additionally, CNNs are computationally intensive and technically complex, making them challenging for end-users, such as those who use or create WUI maps, to apply. Aims: We identified buildings pre- and post-wildfire and estimated building destruction for three California wildfires: Camp, Tubbs and Woolsey.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Changes in wildfire occurrence and risk to homes from 1990 through 2019 in the Southern Rocky Mountains, USA
Year: 2023
Wildfires and housing development have increased since the 1990s, presenting unique challenges for wildfire management. However, it is unclear how the relative influences of housing growth and changing wildfire occurrence have altered risk to homes, or the potential for wildfire to threaten homes. We used a random forests model to predict burn probability in relation to weather variables at 1-km resolution and monthly intervals from 1990 through 2019 in the Southern Rocky Mountains ecoregion. We quantified risk by combining the predicted burn probabilities with decadal housing density. We…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Unprotected lands: A case study of a wildland-urban interface community in “No-Man's land”
Year: 2023
There are areas of the United States that have no formalized fire protection. These lands are colloquially referred to as “no-man’s land” but are recognized by many land management agencies as unprotected lands. Unprotected lands are generally rural landscapes and exist in areas that are sparsely populated and lack formalized fire protection. In some cases, lands that are designated as wildland-urban interface are comprised of significant portions of unprotected lands. Currently, there has been little in the way of research completed that pertains to the overall amount of land that is…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Burnover events identified during the 2018 Camp Fire
Year: 2023
Background: The Camp Fire burned through communities in Butte County, California, on 8 November 2018. The fire destroyed over 18 000 structures and caused 85 fatalities, mostly within the first 12 h of the incident. Aims: A post-fire case study was conducted to learn from the devastating incident. Methods: The case study was supported by detailed first-hand accounts from 157 first responders, photos and videos, first responder radio logs, and other field data. Subsequent analysis and data integration yielded a timeline reconstruction of the first 24 h of the entire event, as well as…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Drivers of California’s changing wildfires: a state-of-the-knowledge synthesis
Year: 2023
Over the past four decades, annual area burned has increased significantly in California and across the western USA. This trend reflects a confluence of intersecting factors that affect wildfire regimes. It is correlated with increasing temperatures and atmospheric vapour pressure deficit. Anthropogenic climate change is the driver behind much of this change, in addition to influencing other climate-related factors, such as compression of the winter wet season. These climatic trends and associated increases in fire activity are projected to continue into the future. Additionally, factors…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Flammability study of decking sections found at the Wildland–Urban interface at different scales
Year: 2023
This work presents a study of the fire reaction of two types of decking sections (wood and thermoplastic) exposed to a radiant heat source. The flammability was studied at two scales: a cone calorimeter was used at product scale (36 cm2) and at assembly scale (around 1300 cm2), experiments were performed under a Large Scale Heat Release calorimeter with a radiant burner. Since the wood decking sections have gaps, the influence of the orientation of the sections facing the burner was further investigated. At product scale, the wood sections ignite sooner than the thermoplastic sections whereas…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Face-to-face with scorching wildfire: potential toxicant exposure and the health risks of smoke for wildland firefighters at the wildland-urban interface
Year: 2023
As wildfire risks have elevated due to climate change, the health risks that toxicants from fire smoke pose to wildland firefighters have been exacerbated. Recently, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has reclassified wildland firefighters’ occupational exposure as carcinogenic to humans (Group 1). Wildfire smoke contributes to an increased risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease, yet wildland firefighters have inadequate respiratory protection. The economic cost of wildland fires has risen concurrently, as illustrated by the appropriation of $45 billion for wildfire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland–Urban Interface: Definition and Physical Fire Risk Mitigation Measures, a Systematic Review
Year: 2023
Due to the associated fire risk, the wildland–urban interface (WUI) has drawn the attention of researchers and managers from a range of backgrounds. From a land management point of view, it is important to identify the WUI to determine areas to prioritise for fire risk prevention. It is also important to know the fire risk mitigation measures available to select the most appropriate for each specific context. In this systematic review, definitions of the WUI were investigated and physical mitigation measures for reducing the risk of fire were examined from a land management perspective. The…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Exploring and Testing Wildfire Risk Decision-Making in the Face of Deep Uncertainty
Year: 2023
We integrated a mechanistic wildfire simulation system with an agent-based landscape change model to investigate the feedbacks among climate change, population growth, development, landowner decision-making, vegetative succession, and wildfire. Our goal was to develop an adaptable simulation platform for anticipating risk-mitigation tradeoffs in a fire-prone wildland–urban interface (WUI) facing conditions outside the bounds of experience. We describe how five social and ecological system (SES) submodels interact over time and space to generate highly variable alternative futures even within…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Fire Adapted Communities Pathways Tool: Facilitating Social Learning and a Science of Practice
Year: 2023
Wildfire science, policy, and practice lack systematic means for “tailoring” fire adaptation practices to socially diverse human populations and in ways that aggregate existing lessons. This article outlines the development and initial operationalization of the Fire Adapted Communities Pathways Tool, an inductive set of processes that help facilitate dialogue about needs and priorities for wildfire adaptation strategies across ownership boundaries or partners. We outline the stages and considerations organized by the tool, including how its components build from decades of social science and…
Communicating about Fire, Public Perceptions of Fire and Smoke, Social and Community Impacts of Fire
Publication Type: Journal Article