Journal Article

Fire suppression and other factors have resulted in high wildfire risk in the western US, and prescribed burning can be an effective tool for thinning forests and reducing fuels to lessen wildfire risks. However, prescribed burning sometimes fails to substantially reduce fuels and sometimes damages and kills valuable, large trees.

Fire profoundly influences people, climate, and ecosystems (1). The impacts of this interaction are likely to grow, with climate models forecasting widespread increases in fire frequency and intensity because of rising global temperatures (2). However, the relationship between fire and biodiversity is complex (3, 4).

Fighting wildfires in the United States costs billions of dollars annually. Public dialog and ongoing research have focused on increasing wildfire risk because of climate warming, overlooking the direct role that people play in igniting wildfires and increasing fire activity. Our analysis of two decades of government agency wildfire records highlights the fundamental role of human ignitions.

Identifying communities vulnerable to adverse health effects from exposure to wildfire smoke may help prepare responses, increase the resilience to smoke and improve public health outcomes during smoke days. We developed a Community Health-Vulnerability Index (CHVI) based on factors known to increase the risks of health effects from air pollution and wildfire smoke exposures.

The proportion of fire area that experienced stand-replacing fire effects is an important attribute of individual fires and fire regimes in forests, and this metric has been used to group forest types into characteristic fire regimes.

Prescribed burning is a primary tool for habitat restoration and management in fire-adapted grasslands. Concerns about detrimental effects of burning on butterfly populations, however, can inhibit implementation of treatments.

Prescribed fire is widely applied in western US forests to limit future fire severity by reducing tree density, fuels, and excessive seedlings. Repeated prescribed burning attempts to simulate historical fire regimes in frequent-fire forests, yet there is limited long-term information regarding optimal burn season and frequency.

Describing the climate influences on historical wildland fire will aid managers in planning for future change.

Previous studies have suggested that bark beetles and fires can be interacting disturbances, whereby bark beetle–caused tree mortality can alter the risk and severity of subsequent wildland fires.

We examined stand structure, demography, and fire history using tree cores and fire scar data across an approximately 7000-hectare study area over an elevational gradient in the southern Cascade Range, Oregon, USA. Our plots were located in mountain hemlock (Tsuga mertensiana [Bong.] Carr), red fir (Abies magnifica A.