Journal Article

Wildfires emit significant amounts of pollutants that degrade air quality. Plumes from three wildfires in the western U.S. were measured from aircraft during the Studies of Emissions and Atmospheric Composition, Clouds and Climate Coupling by Regional Surveys (SEAC4RS) and the Biomass Burning Observation Project (BBOP), both in summer 2013.

The area burned annually by wildfires is expected to increase worldwide due to climate change. Burned areas increase soil erosion rates within watersheds, which can increase sedimentation in downstream rivers and reservoirs. However, which watersheds will be impacted by future wildfires is largely unknown.

Wildfire area is predicted to increase with global warming. Empirical statistical models and process-based simulations agree almost universally. The key relationship for this unanimity, observed at multiple spatial and temporal scales, is between drought and fire.

The Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS) is a web-based software and data integration framework that organizes fire and fuels software applications into a single online application. IFTDSS is designed to make fuels treatment planning and analysis more efficient and effective.

In the prairies of the Pacific Northwest, USA, fire has been reintroduced as a tool for reducing non-native, invasive plant cover and promoting the growth and establishment of native plant communities.

Prescribed fire is a primary tool used to restore western forests following more than a century of fire exclusion, reducing fire hazard by removing dead and live fuels (small trees and shrubs).

More than 50% of water supplies in the conterminous United States originate on forestland or rangeland, and are potentially under increasing stress as a result of larger and more severe wildfires. Little is known however about the long-term impacts of fire on annual water yield, and the role of climate variability within this context.

In 1935, Elers Koch argued in a Journal of Forestry article that a minimum fire protection model should be implemented in the backcountry areas of national forests in Idaho, USA. As a USDA Forest Service Supervisor and Assistant Regional Forester, Koch had led many major fire-fighting campaigns in the region, beginning with the great 1910 fires of Idaho and Montana.

Climate change is altering the frequency and severity of forest disturbances such as wildfires and bark beetle outbreaks, thereby increasing the potential for sequential disturbances to interact. Interactions can amplify or dampen disturbances, yet the direction and magnitude of future disturbance interactions are difficult to anticipate because underlying mechanisms remain poorly understood.

Changing climate and a legacy of fire-exclusion have increased the probability of high-severity wildfire, leading to an increased risk of forest carbon loss in ponderosa pine forests in the southwestern USA.