Journal Article

Some tick populations have increased dramatically in the past several decades leading to an increase in the incidence and emergence of tick-borne diseases. Management strategies that can effectively reduce tick populations while better understanding regional tick phenology is needed. One promising management strategy is prescribed burning.

Questions: Wildfire is a natural disturbance that shapes vegetation characteristics worldwide, while prescribed fire is increasingly used to modify vegetation composition and structure. Due to invasion of many ecosystems by exotic species, a concern of land managers is whether wildfire and prescribed fire alter plant communities in favour of exotics.

Opinions about public lands and the actions of private non-industrial forest owners in the western United States play important roles in forested landscape management as both public and private forests face increasing risks from large wildfires, pests and disease.

Ecological restoration often attempts to promote native species while managing for disturbances such as fire and non-native invasions. The goal of this research was to investigate whether restoration of a non-native, invasive Megathyrsus maximus (guinea grass) tropical grassland could simultaneously promote native species and reduce fire potential.

Research across a variety of risk domains finds that the risk perceptions of professionals and the public differ. Such risk perception gaps occur if professionals and the public understand individual risk factors differently or if they aggregate risk factors into overall risk differently.

1. Climate change is likely to shift plant communities towards species from warmer regions, a processtermed ‘thermophilization’. In forests, canopy disturbances such as fire may hasten this processby increasing temperature and moisture stress in the understory, yet little is known about the mechanismsthat might drive such shifts, or the consequences of these processes for plant diversity.2.

Humans cause more than 55% of wildfires on lands managed by the USDA Forest Service and US Department of the Interior, contributing to both suppression expenditures and damages.

While many ecosystems depend on fire to maintain biodiversity, non-native plant invasions can enhance fire intensity, suppressing native species and generating a fire–invasion feedback.

In the western United States, mountain pine beetles (MPBs) have killed pine trees across 71,000 km2 of forest since the mid-1990s, leading to widespread concern that abundant dead fuels may increase area burned and exacerbate fire behavior.

Large wildfires of increasing frequency and severity threaten local populations and natural resources and contribute carbon emissions into the earth-climate system.