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Research Database

Displaying 1 - 20 of 34

Simulated Future Shifts in Wildfire Regimes in Moist Forests of Pacific Northwest, USA

Year: 2024
Fire is an integral natural disturbance in the moist temperate forests of the Pacific Northwest of the United States, but future changes remain uncertain. Fire regimes in this climatically and biophysically diverse region are complex, but typically climate limited. One challenge for interpreting potential changes is conveying projection uncertainty. Using projections of Energy Release Component (ERC) derived from 12 global climate models (GCM) that vary in performance relative to the region's contemporary climate, we simulated thousands of plausible fire seasons with the stochastic spatial…
Climate Change and Fire
fire regimes, hazards
Publication Type: Journal Article

Indigenous pyrodiversity promotes plant diversity

Year: 2024
Pyrodiversity (temporally and spatially diverse fire histories) is thought to promote biodiversity by increasing environmental heterogeneity and replicating Indigenous fire regimes, yet studies of pyrodiversity-biodiversity relationships from areas under active Indigenous fire stewardship are rare. Here, we explored whether Indigenous pyrodiversity promoted plant richness and diversity in an arid ecosystem from north-western Australia. We selected landscapes that ranged from highly pyrodiverse and under active Indigenous burning to more coarse-scale and less diverse mosaics under lightning…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Social and Community Impacts of Fire
indigenous fire stewardship, biodiversity, fire regimes
Publication Type: Journal Article

Pre-contact Indigenous fire stewardship: a research framework and application to a Pacific Northwest temperate rainforest

Year: 2024
Fire is a key disturbance process that shapes the structure and function of montane temperate rainforest in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). Recent research is revealing more frequent historical fire activity in the western central Cascades than expected by conventional theory. Indigenous peoples have lived in the PNW for millennia. However, Indigenous people's roles in shaping vegetation mosaics in montane temperate forests of the PNW has been overlooked, despite archaeological evidence of long-term, continuous human use of these landscapes. In this paper, we present a generalizable research…
Fire History, Fuels and Fuel Treatments
indigenous fire stewardship, fire regimes
Publication Type: Journal Article

Changing fire regimes and nuanced impacts on a critically imperiled species

Year: 2024
Wildfire activity throughout western North America is increasing which can have important consequences for species persistence. Native species have evolved disturbance-adapted traits that confer resilience to natural disturbance provided disturbances operate within their historical range of variability. This resilience can erode as disturbance regimes change and begin operating outside this range. We assessed wildfire impacts during 1987–2018 on the northern spotted owl, an imperiled species with complex relationships with late and early seral forest in the Pacific Northwest, USA. We analyzed…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fire History, Fish and Wildlife Habitat
wildlife, fire regimes
Publication Type: Journal Article

Managing fire-prone forests in a time of decreasing carbon carrying capacity

Year: 2024
Changing climatic conditions are increasing overstory tree mortality in forests globally. This restructuring of the distribution of biomass is making already flammable forests more combustible, posing a major challenge for managing the transition to a lower biomass state. In western US dry conifer forests, tree density resulting from over a century of fire-exclusion practices has increased the risk of high-severity wildfire and susceptibility to climate-driven mortality. Reducing dead fuel loads will require new approaches to mitigate risk to the remaining live trees by preparing forests to…
Fuels and Fuel Treatments, Prescribed Burning
drought, fire regimes, mitigation
Publication Type: Journal Article

Hydrometeorology-wildfire relationship analysis based on a wildfire bivariate probabilistic framework in different ecoregions of the continental United States

Year: 2024
Wildfires are a natural part of the ecosystem in the U.S.. It is vital to classify wildfires using a comprehensive approach that simultaneously considers wildfire activity (the number of wildfires) and burned area. On this basis, the influence of hydrometeorological variables on wildfires can be further analyzed. Therefore, this study first classified wildfire types using a wildfire bivariate probability framework. Then, by considering six hydrometeorological variables, the dominant hydrometeorological variables for different wildfire types in 17 ecoregions of the United States were…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
fire behavior, fire regimes, weather
Publication Type: Journal Article

Historical pyrodiversity in Douglas-fir forests of the southern Cascades of Oregon, USA

Year: 2024
Our understanding of forest dynamics and successional pathways in coastal Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii var menziesii) forests with relatively frequent mixed-severity fires is limited by a lack of annually precise dendroecological reconstructions that combine records of historical fires and tree establishment. The processes by which old-forest heterogeneity developed under historical fire regimes with recurrent low- and moderate-severity fires has not been well studied at fine temporal scales and across spatial scales. We developed crossdated multi-century records of fire and…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fire History, Prescribed Burning
indigenous fire stewardship, fire regimes
Publication Type: Journal Article

Fire history in northern Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forests across a distinct gradient in productivity

Year: 2024
BackgroundUnderstanding the role of fire in forested landscapes is fundamental to fire reintroduction efforts, yet few studies have examined how fire dynamics vary in response to interactions between local conditions, such as soil productivity, and more broadscale changes in climate. In this study, we examined historical fire frequency, seasonality, and spatial patterning in mixed conifer forests across a distinct gradient of soil productivity in the northern Sierra Nevada. We cross-dated 46 different wood samples containing 377 fire scars from 6 paired sites, located on and off of…
Fire History, Mixed-Conifer Management, Soils and Woody Debris
fire regimes, drought
Publication Type: Journal Article

Landsat assessment of variable spectral recovery linked to post-fire forest structure in dry sub-boreal forests

Year: 2024
Forest disturbances such as wildfires can dramatically alter forest structure and composition, increasing the likelihood of ecosystem changes. Up-to-date and accurate measures of post-disturbance forest recovery in managed forests are critical, particularly for silvicultural planning. Measuring the live and dead vegetation post-fire is challenging because areas impacted by wildfire may be remote, difficult to access, and/or dangerous to survey. The difficulties of post-fire monitoring are compounded by the global increase in the frequency and severity of disturbances, as expansion of…
Risk Assessment and Analysis
remote sensing, disturbance, post-fire
Publication Type: Journal Article

Model analysis of post-fire management and potential reburn fire behavior

Year: 2024
Recent trends in wildfire area burned have been characterized by large patches with high densities of standing dead trees, well outside of historical range of variability in many areas and presenting forest managers with difficult decisions regarding post-fire management. Post-fire tree harvesting, commonly called salvage logging, is a controversial management tactic that is often undertaken to recoup economic loss and, more recently, also to reduce future fuel hazard, especially when coupled with surface fuel reduction. It is unclear, however, whether the reductions in future fuels translate…
Fuels and Fuel Treatments, Soils and Woody Debris
post-fire, fire severity, management
Publication Type: Journal Article

Fire severity drives understory community dynamics and the recovery of culturally significant plants

Year: 2024
Anthropogenic influences are altering fire regimes worldwide, resulting in an increase in the size and severity of wildfires. Simultaneously, throughout western North America, there is increasing recognition of the important role of Indigenous fire stewardship in shaping historical fire regimes and fire-adapted ecosystems. However, there is limited understanding of how ecosystems are affected by or recover from contemporary “megafires,” particularly in terms of understory plant communities that are critical to both biodiversity and Indigenous cultures. To address this gap, our collaborative…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
fire severity, forest understory, post-fire
Publication Type: Journal Article

Nonstructural carbohydrates explain post-fire tree mortality and recovery patterns

Year: 2024
Trees use nonstructural carbohydrates (NSCs) to support many functions, including recovery from disturbances. However, NSC’s importance for recovery following fire and whether NSC depletion contributes to post-fire delayed mortality are largely unknown. We investigated how fire affects NSCs based on fire-caused injury from a prescribed fire in a young Pinus ponderosa (Lawson & C. Lawson) stand. We assessed crown injury (needle scorch and bud kill) and measured NSCs of needles and inner bark (i.e., secondary phloem) of branches and main stems of trees subject to fire and at an…
Prescribed Burning
post-fire
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…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
post-fire, resilience, tree mortality, fire severity
Publication Type: Journal Article

Centering socioecological connections to collaboratively manage post- fire vegetation shifts

Year: 2024
Climate  change  is  altering  fire  regimes  and  post-fire  conditions,  contributing  to  relatively  rapid  transformation  of  landscapes  across  the  western  US.  Studies  are  increasingly  documenting  post-fire  vegetation  transitions,  particularly  from  forest  to  non-  forest conditions or from sagebrush to invasive annual grasses. The prevalence of climate-driven, post-fire vegetation transitions is likely to increase…
Climate Change and Fire, Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
post-fire, management
Publication Type: Journal Article

Climate limits vegetation green-up more than slope, soil erodibility, and immediate precipitation following high-severity wildfire

Year: 2024
BackgroundIn the southwestern United States, post-fire vegetation recovery is increasingly variable in forest burned at high severity. Many factors, including temperature, drought, and erosion, can reduce post-fire vegetation recovery rates. Here, we examined how year-of-fire precipitation variability, topography, and soils influenced post-fire vegetation recovery in the southwestern United States as measured by greenness to determine whether erosion-related factors would have persistent effects in the longer post-fire period. We modeled relationships between post-fire vegetation and these…
Climate Change and Fire, Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Soils and Woody Debris
post-fire, fire severity
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…
Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
post-fire, resilience
Publication Type: Journal Article

A fast spectral recovery does not necessarily indicate post-fire forest recovery

Year: 2024
BackgroundClimate change has increased wildfire activity in the western USA and limited the capacity for forests to recover post-fire, especially in areas burned at high severity. Land managers urgently need a better understanding of the spatiotemporal variability in natural post-fire forest recovery to plan and implement active recovery projects. In burned areas, post-fire “spectral recovery”, determined by examining the trajectory of multispectral indices (e.g., normalized burn ratio) over time, generally corresponds with recovery of multiple post-fire vegetation types, including trees and…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
post-fire, modeling, remote sensing
Publication Type: Journal Article

Western larch regeneration more sensitive to wildfire-related factors than seasonal climate variability

Year: 2024
To understand the impacts of changing climate and wildfire activity on conifer forests, we studied how wildfire and post-fire seasonal climate conditions influence western larch (Larix occidentalis) regeneration across its range in the northwestern US. We destructively sampled 1651 seedlings from 57 sites across 32 fires that burned at moderate or high severity between 2000 and 2015; sites were within 100 m of reproductively mature western larch. Using dendrochronological methods, we estimated germination years of seedlings to calculate annual recruitment rates. We used boosted…
Climate Change and Fire, Mixed-Conifer Management
post-fire, modeling
Publication Type: Journal Article

Prescribed fire increases forage mineral content in grazed rangeland

Year: 2024
BackgroundSustainable rangeland management balances production and conservation. While a broad literature describes the conservation benefits of prescribed fire, benefits for livestock production have emerged more slowly. Mineral nutrition is important for livestock health and performance, but the impact of prescribed fire on mineral concentration of forages, especially in the northern US Great Plains, remains unknown.AimsWe investigated how burning affects the mineral concentration of forage early and late in the growing season.MethodsData…
Fire and Rangelands, Prescribed Burning
post-fire
Publication Type: Journal Article

Rare and highly destructive wildfires drive human migration in the U.S.

Year: 2024
The scale of wildfire impacts to the built environment is growing and will likely continue under rising average global temperatures. We investigate whether and at what destruction threshold wildfires have influenced human mobility patterns by examining the migration effects of the most destructive wildfires in the contiguous U.S. between 1999 and 2020. We find that only the most extreme wildfires (258+ structures destroyed) influenced migration patterns. In contrast, the majority of wildfires examined were less destructive and did not cause significant changes to out- or in-migration. These…
Economic Impacts of Fire, Public Perceptions of Fire and Smoke, Social and Community Impacts of Fire
post-fire, community, wildland fire
Publication Type: Journal Article