Projected effects of climate change across many ecosystems globally include more frequent disturbance byfire and reduced plant growth due to warmer (and especially drier) conditions.
Periodic fire is thought to improve whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) regeneration by reducing competition and creating openings, but the mechanisms by which fire affects seedling establishment are poorly understood.
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.
Severe, decades-long "megadroughts" that hit the southwestern and midwestern United States over the past millennium may be just a preview of droughts to come in the next century as a result of climate change, new research suggests.
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.
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.