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Research Database

Displaying 21 - 40 of 137

Short-term impacts of operational fuel treatments on modelled fire behaviour and effects in seasonally dry forests of British Columbia, Canada

Year: 2025
Background: In response to increasing risk of extreme wildfire across western North America, forest managers are proactively implementing fuel treatments.Aims: We assessed the efficacy of alternative combinations of thinning, pruning and residue fuel management to mitigate potential fire behaviour and effects in seasonally dry forests of interior British Columbia, Canada.Methods: Across five community forests, we measured stand attributes before and after fuel treatments in 2021 and 2022, then modelled fire behaviour and effects using the…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fuels and Fuel Treatments
modeling, post-fire, fire behavior
Publication Type: Journal Article

Mapping Delayed Canopy Loss and Durable Fire Refugia for the 2020 Wildfires in Washington State Using Multiple Sensors

Year: 2025
Fire refugia are unburned and low severity patches within wildfires that contribute heterogeneity that is important to retaining biodiversity and regenerating forest following fire. With increasingly intense and frequent wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, fire refugia are important for re-establishing populations sensitive to fire and maintaining resilience to future disturbances. Mapping fire refugia and delayed canopy loss is useful for understanding patterns in their distribution. The increasing abundance of satellite data and advanced analysis platforms offer the potential to map fire…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
tree mortality, post-fire, fire refugia, remote sensing
Publication Type: Journal Article

Offsetting the noise: a framework for applying phenological offset corrections in remotely sensed burn severity assessments

Year: 2025
BackgroundPhenological correction of pre- and post-fire imagery is used to improve remotely sensed burn severity evaluations. Unburned offset values standardize greenness between image pairs; however, efficacy across diverse scenarios remains underexplored.AimsWe evaluated the impact of phenological offset correction methods to support analyst decision-making across fire-prone environments.MethodsWe generated burn severity spectral index values for a dataset of Composite Burn Index (CBI) field plots across the conterminous US. The…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
fire severity, post-fire, remote sensing
Publication Type: Journal Article

Planted seedling regeneration using gap-based silviculture without herbicide in a wildfire-impacted forest of the Sierra Nevada

Year: 2025
Gap-based silviculture, which we define as the creation and maintenance of multi-aged stands through the periodic harvesting of discrete canopy gaps, provides a potential mechanism for converting previously high-graded stands into more heterogeneous, multi-aged structures. An advantage of small canopy gaps, relative to even-aged regeneration methods, is their potential to suppress shrub competition while allowing seedling growth without the use of herbicides or other means of managing shrub competition. While this idea has been proposed in principle, it has not been tested. The objective of…
Mixed-Conifer Management, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
tree mortality, post-fire, management, forest understory
Publication Type: Journal Article

Fire gives avian populations a rapid and enduring boost in protected forests of California

Year: 2025
BackgroundFire can impact ecosystems and species over both short and long timeframes, resulting in pervasive impacts on the structure of avian communities. While recent research has highlighted the strong impact of fire on bird communities in the short term, there remains a need for understanding long-term population processes following fire, particularly in forested landscapes that are burning more frequently than in the past century. We analyzed avian response to fire using point-count data from 1999–2019 within national parks of the Sierra Nevada Inventory & Monitoring Network,…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fish and Wildlife Habitat
biodiversity, post-fire, fire severity
Publication Type: Journal Article

Small-scale fire refugia increase soil bacterial and fungal richness and increase community cohesion nine years after fire

Year: 2025
Small-scale variation in wildfire behavior may cause large differences in belowground bacterial and fungal communities with consequences for belowground microbial diversity, community assembly, and function. Here we combine pre-fire, active-fire, and post-wildfire measurements in a mixed-conifer forest to identify how fine-scale wildfire behavior, unburned refugia, and aboveground forest structure are associated with belowground bacterial and fungal communities nine years after wildfire. We used fine-scale mapping of small (0.9–172.6 m2) refugia to sample soil-associated burned and…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Soils and Woody Debris
post-fire, forest structure, fire refugia, disturbance
Publication Type: Journal Article

Mobile radar provides insights into hydrologic responses in burn areas

Year: 2025
Background. Wildfires often occur in mountainous terrain, regions that pose substantial challenges to operational meteorological and hydrologic observing networks. Aims. A mobile, postfire hydrometeorological observatory comprising remote-sensing and in situ instrumentation was developed and deployed in a burnt area to provide unique insights into rainfall-induced post-fire hazards. Methods. Mobile radar-based rainfall estimates were produced throughout the burn area at 75-m resolution and compared with rain gauge accumulations and basin response variables. Key results. The mobile radar was…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
remote sensing, weather, post-fire, wildfire and water
Publication Type: Journal Article

Postfire recovery trajectories of bulldozed versus burned chaparral eight years postfire

Year: 2025
BackgroundWe examined vegetation diversity, structure, and composition on and off fuel breaks established during a 2013 wildfire in California chaparral shrublands. Vegetation was sampled 8 years following the fire to identify any persistent changes in structure or composition caused by this fire management activity, with implications for postfire vegetation recovery.ResultsWhile species diversity and cover of lifeforms did not differ on and off fuel breaks, species composition and regeneration strategy of dominant shrubs differed significantly. Sites in fuel…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
post-fire, management, suppression
Publication Type: Journal Article

Parcel-Level Risk Affects Wildfire Outcomes: Insights from Pre-Fire Rapid Assessment Data for Homes Destroyed in 2020 East Troublesome Fire

Year: 2024
Parcel-level risk (PLR) describes how wildfire risk varies from home to home based on characteristics that relate to likely fire behavior, the susceptibility of homes to fire, and the ability of firefighters to safely access properties. Here, we describe the WiRē Rapid Assessment (RA), a parcel-level rapid wildfire risk assessment tool designed to evaluate PLR with a small set of measures for all homes in a community. We investigate the relationship between 2019 WiRē RA data collected in the Columbine Lake community in Grand County, Colorado, and whether assessed homes were destroyed in the…
Communicating about Fire, Risk Assessment and Analysis, Social and Community Impacts of Fire
post-fire, mitigation
Publication Type: Journal Article

Quantifying Aspect-Dependent Snowpack Response to High-Elevation Wildfire in the Southern Rocky Mountains

Year: 2024
Increasing wildfire frequency and severity in high-elevation seasonal snow zones presents a considerable water resource management challenge across the western United States (U.S.). Wildfires can affect snowpack accumulation and melt patterns, altering the quantity and timing of runoff. While prior research has shown that wildfire generally increases snow melt rates and advances snow disappearance dates, uncertainties remain regarding variations across complex terrain and the energy balance between burned and unburned areas. Utilizing paired in situ data sources within the 2020 Cameron Peak…
Climate Change and Fire, Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
post-fire, wildfire and water
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

Characterizing post-fire delayed tree mortality with remote sensing: sizing up the elephant in the room

Year: 2024
BackgroundDespite recent advances in understanding the drivers of tree-level delayed mortality, we lack a method for mapping delayed mortality at landscape and regional scales. Consequently, the extent, magnitude, and effects of delayed mortality on post-fire landscape patterns of burn severity are unknown. We introduce a remote sensing approach for mapping delayed mortality based on post-fire decline in the normalized burn ratio (NBR). NBR decline is defined as the change in NBR between the first post-fire measurement and the minimum NBR value up to 5 years post-fire for each pixel…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
fire refugia, post-fire, tree mortality
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

Moderating effects of past wildfire on reburn severity depend on climate and initial severity in Western US forests

Year: 2024
Rising global fire activity is increasing the prevalence of repeated short-interval burning (reburning) in forests worldwide. In forests that historically experienced frequent-fire regimes, high-severity fire exacerbates the severity of subsequent fires by increasing prevalence of shrubs and/or by creating drier understory conditions. Low- to moderate-severity fire, in contrast, can moderate future fire behavior by reducing fuel loads. The extent to which previous fires moderate future fire severity will powerfully affect fire-prone forest ecosystem trajectories over the next century. Further…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fire History, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
fire severity, post-fire, weather
Publication Type: Journal Article

When do contemporary wildfires restore forest structures in the Sierra Nevada?

Year: 2024
Background: Following a century of fire suppression in western North America, managers use forest restoration treatments to reduce fuel loads and reintroduce key processes like fire. However, annual area burned by wildfire frequently outpaces the application of restoration treatments. As this trend continues under climate change, it is essential that we understand the effects of contemporary wildfires on forest ecosystems and the extent to which post-fire structures are meeting common forest restoration objectives. In this study, we used airborne lidar to evaluate fire effects across yellow…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
fire severity, post-fire
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

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…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fire History, Fuels and Fuel Treatments
regeneration, post-fire, fire behavior
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

Prefire Drought Intensity Drives Postfire Recovery and Mortality in Pinus monticola and Pseudotsuga menziesii Saplings

Year: 2024
Increasing frequency of droughts and wildfire are sparking concerns that these compounded disturbance events are pushing forested ecosystems beyond recovery. An improved understanding of how compounded events affect tree physiology and mortality is needed given the reliance of fire management planning on accurate estimates of postfire tree mortality. In this study, we use a toxicological dose-response approach to quantify the impact of variable-intensity drought and fire on the physiology and mortality of Pinus monticola and Pseudotsuga menziesii saplings. We show that the…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
drought, post-fire, disturbance
Publication Type: Journal Article

A Review of the Occurrence and Causes for Wildfires and Their Impacts on the Geoenvironment

Year: 2024
Wildfires have short- and long-term impacts on the geoenvironment, including the changes to biogeochemical and mechanical properties of soils, landfill stability, surface- and groundwater, air pollution, and vegetation. Climate change has increased the extent and severity of wildfires across the world. Simultaneously, anthropogenic activities—through the expansion of urban areas into wildlands, abandonment of rural practices, and accidental or intentional fire-inception activities—are also responsible for a majority of fires. This paper provides an overall review and critical appraisal of…
Climate Change and Fire, Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Smoke and Air Quality, Soils and Woody Debris
post-fire
Publication Type: Journal Article