Wildland fire is an important natural process in many ecosystems. However, fire exclusion has reduced frequency of fire and area burned in many dry forest types, which may affect vegetation structure and composition, and potential fire behavior.
Development owing to population increases over the last 30 years has greatly affected forested lands in the United States. To assess and compare increases in development, we counted changes in the number of structures on a systematic grid of photointerpreted points around public forest land in Washington and Oregon.
The relationship between large fire occurrence and drought has important implications for fire prediction under current and future climates.
Forests dominated by Douglas-fir and western hemlock in the Pacific Northwest of the United States have strongly influenced concepts and policy concerning old-growth forest conservation.
The “pyroclimatic hypothesis” proposed by F. Biondi and colleagues provides a basis for testable expectations about climatic and other controls of fire regimes. This hypothesis asserts an a priori relationship between the occurrence of widespread fire and values of a relevant climatic index.
In 2002, the Biscuit Wildfire burned a portion of the previously established, replicated conifer unthinned and thinned experimental units of the Siskiyou Long-Term Ecosystem Productivity (LTEP) experiment, southwest Oregon. Charcoal C in pre and post-fire O horizon and mineral soil was quantified by physical separation and a peroxide-acid digestion method.
The view that subalpine forest vegetation dynamics in western North America are "driven" by a particular disturbance type (i.e. fire) has shaped our understanding of their disturbance regimes.
Aim Wildfire is often considered more severe now than historically in dry forestsof the western United States. Tree-ring reconstructions, which suggest that historicaldry forests were park-like with large, old trees maintained by low-severity fires,are from small, scattered studies.
Understanding the causes and consequences of wildfires in forests of the western United States requires integrated information about fire, climate changes, and human activity on multiple temporal scales.
Episodic stand-replacing wildfire is a significant disturbance in mesic and moist Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) forests of the Pacific Northwest.