We created the first annually resolved records of historical fire occurrence coupled with precise estimates of tree establishment for the northern half of the west slope of the Oregon Cascades, a region that is home to some of the most productive forests on earth.
Changes in wildfire regimes may disrupt ecosystem processes as wildfires burn larger areas or burn more frequently than the recent natural range of variability. The climatic drivers of wildfire behavior may change in strength, but these effects are not likely to be uniform across space and different vegetation types.
Wild and intentionally ignited fires are not new to North American landscapes or to the Indigenous cultures whose ancestral places encompass them. For millennia, Indigenous fire stewardship has been regionally and locally distributed across North American ecosystems.
Adoption of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) in 1994 marked a pivotal moment in federal forest management in the Pacific Northwest, shifting focus away from intensive timber harvest toward an ecosystem management approach that emphasized late successional and old forest habitat with the creation of a reserve network across moist and dry forest zones.
Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme wildfires globally, yet our understanding of these high-impact events remains uneven and shaped by media attention and regional research biases.