Disturbance refugia – locations that experience less severe or frequent disturbances than the surrounding landscape – provide a framework to highlight not only where and why these biological legacies persist as adjacent areas change but also the value of those legacies in sustaining biodiversity.
Context Fire regimes in many dry forests of western North America are substantially different from historical conditions, and there is concern about the ability of these forests to recover following severe wildfire. Fire refugia, unburned or low-severity burned patches where trees survived fire, may serve as essential propagule sources that enable forest regeneration.
Altered fire regimes can drive major and enduring compositional shifts or losses of forest ecosystems. In western North America, ponderosa pine and dry mixed‐conifer forest types appear increasingly vulnerable to uncharacteristically extensive, high‐severity wildfire.
Fire refugia are landscape elements that remain unburned or minimally affected by fire, thereby supporting postfire ecosystem function, biodiversity, and resilience to disturbances.
A warming climate, fire exclusion, and land cover changes are altering the conditions that produced historical fire regimes and facilitating increased recent wildfire activity in the northwestern United States.
A warming climate, fire exclusion, and land cover changes are altering the conditions that produced historical fire regimes and facilitating increased recent wildfire activity in the northwestern United States.