Fire Effects and Fire Ecology

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.

Rapid increases in wildfire area burned across North American forests pose novel challenges for managers and society. Increasing area burned raises questions about whether, and to what degree, contemporary fire regimes (1984–2022) are still departed from historical fire regimes (pre-1880).

Background: The increased interest in why and how trees die from fire has led to several syntheses of the potential mechanisms of fire-induced tree mortality. However, these generally neglect to consider experimental methods used to simulate fire behaviour conditions.

Purpose of Review

Canada has experienced more-intense and longer fire seasons with more-frequent uncontrollable wildfires over the past decades. However, the effect of these changes remains unknown. This study identifies driving forces of burn severity and estimates its spatiotemporal variations in Canadian forests.

Burned area and proportion of high severity fire have been increasing in the western USA, and reducing wildfire severity with fuel treatments or other means is key for maintaining fire-prone dry forests and avoiding fire-catalyzed forest loss. Despite the unprecedented scope of firefighting operations in recent years, their contribution to patterns of wildfire severity is rarely quantified.

Background: Wildfires can significantly impact water quality and supply. However logistical difficulties and high variability in in situ data collection have limited previous analyses.

Aims: We simulated wildfire and rainfall effects at varying terrain slopes in a controlled setting to isolate driver-response relationships.

Increasing wildfire severity is of growing concern in the western United States, with consequences for the production, composition, and mobilization of dissolved organic matter (DOM) from terrestrial to aquatic systems.

Fire and drought are expected to increase in frequency and severity in temperate forests due to climate change. To evaluate whether drought increases the likelihood of post-fire tree mortality, we used a large database of tree survival and mortality from 32 years of wildland fires covering four dominant western North American conifers.