Fire Effects

Tree seedling and understory vegetation re-establishment following wildfires is fundamental to landscape recovery but highly variable, depending strongly on biophysical context at small spatial scales. Onsite regeneration surveys and monitoring have been traditionally viewed as a crucial part of sustainable forest management but can be extremely difficult and time-consuming.

Background

Soil and stream nitrate concentrations often increase after severe fire from elevated nitrogen (N) mineralization and reduced plant uptake. However, it is unclear how long these effects persist and contribute to stream N export.

Aims

Background

Debris-flow runout modeling is a valuable component of the prefire assessment of post-fire hazards. The application and benefits of runout modeling are limited by uncertainty in debris-flow volume as well as model parameters related to flow mobility.

Aims

Coniferous forests account for 78% of the western US forests and store a substantial amount of carbon. Wildfires significantly alter vegetation structure and associated forest carbon stocks.

Background

An increase in the occurrence of large, high severity wildfires in the western Pacific Northwest (PNW), USA, has created an urgent need for science to better inform forest management and policy decisions to maintain source water quality in the region.

Aim

Mature and old-growth forests (MOG) provide essential ecosystem services, yet they face increasing threats. Currently, high-intensity, high-severity wildfires are the main driver for loss of MOG on federally managed forests across the United States. Quantifying MOG forests with greatest exposure to stand-replacing wildfires provides essential information for land managers.

Accurate prediction of forest fire spread is a critical management and scientific challenge as the world adapts to rapidly changing fire regimes. We reconstructed 5,400 daily burned area progression maps for 196 U.S. Northern Rocky Mountain wildfires (2012–2021) and used machine learning to estimate daily fire growth given local weather, hydroclimate, fuels and topography.

Background

Post-wildfire debris flows (PFDFs) frequently threaten life, property and infrastructure in California. To date, there is no comprehensive assessment of their spatial distribution, seasonality, atmospheric drivers and interannual variability across the state.

Aims