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fire severity

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Comparing modeled soil temperature and moisture dynamics during prescribed fires, slash-pile burns and wildfires

Year of Publication
2025
Publication Type

Background: Wildfires, prescribed fires and slash-pile burns are disturbances that occur in many terrestrial ecosystems. Such fires produce variable surface heat fluxes causing a spectrum of effects on soil, such as seed mortality, nutrient loss, changes in microbial activity and water repellency. Accurately modeling soil heating is vital to predicting these second-order fire effects.

Prescribed fire, managed burning, and previous wildfires reduce the severity of a southwestern US gigafire

Year of Publication
2025
Publication Type

In many parts of the western United States, wildfires are becoming larger and more severe, threatening the persistence of forest ecosystems. Understanding the ways in which management activities such as prescribed fire and managed wildfire can mitigate fire severity is essential for developing effective forest conservation strategies.

Prescribed fire, managed burning, and previous wildfires reduce the severity of a southwestern US gigafire

Year of Publication
2025
Publication Type

In many parts of the western United States, wildfires are becoming larger and more severe, threatening the persistence of forest ecosystems. Understanding the ways in which management activities such as prescribed fire and managed wildfire can mitigate fire severity is essential for developing effective forest conservation strategies.

Ladder fuels rather than canopy volumes consistently predict wildfire severity even in extreme topographic-weather conditions

Year of Publication
2024
Publication Type

Drivers of forest wildfire severity include fuels, topography and weather. However, because only fuels can be actively managed, quantifying their effects on severity has become an urgent research priority. Here we employed GEDI spaceborne lidar to consistently assess how pre-fire forest fuel structure affected wildfire severity across 42 California wildfires between 2019–2021.