Fire Effects and Fire Ecology

Background

Altered fire regimes are a global challenge, increasingly exacerbated by climate change, which modifies fire weather and prolongs fire seasons. These changing conditions heighten the vulnerability of ecosystems and human populations to the impacts of wildfires on the environment, society, and the economy.

Background: Wildfires, prescribed fires and slash-pile burns are disturbances that occur in many terrestrial ecosystems. Such fires produce variable surface heat fluxes causing a spectrum of effects on soil, such as seed mortality, nutrient loss, changes in microbial activity and water repellency. Accurately modeling soil heating is vital to predicting these second-order fire effects.

Extreme fire spread events rapidly burn large areas with disproportionate impacts on people and ecosystems. Such events are associated with warmer and drier fire seasons and are expected to increase in the future.

Wildfire is a natural disturbance in landscapes of the Western United States, but the effects and extents of fire are changing. Differences between historical and contemporary fire regimes can help identify reasons for observed changes in landscape composition.

Background: Prescribed burning is an effective tool for reducing fuels in many forest types, yet there have been few opportunities to study forest resilience to wildfire in areas previously treated.

Wildfires are growing in destructive power, and accurately predicting the spread and intensity of wildland fire is essential for managing ecological and societal impacts.

Background: In response to increasing risk of extreme wildfire across western North America, forest managers are proactively implementing fuel treatments.

Background: Suppression effectiveness is often evaluated by measuring the extent to which it slows fire spread and reduces fireline intensity. Although studies have used infrared (IR) imaging methods to explore suppression effectiveness, most do not measure or assess the influence of water application on energy release.

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.