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fire severity

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The outsized role of California’s largest wildfires in changing forest burn patterns and coarsening ecosystem scale

Year of Publication
2023
Publication Type

Highlights • We evaluated trends for 1,809 fires that burned 1985–2020 across California forests. • Top 1% of fires by size burned 47% of total area burned across the study period. • Top 1% (18 fires) produced 58% of high and 42% of low-moderate severity area. • Top 1% created novel landscape patterns of large burn severity patches.

Frequency of disturbance mitigates high-severity fire in the Lake Tahoe Basin, California and Nevada

Year of Publication
2022
Publication Type

Because of past land use changes and changing climate, forests are moving outside of their historical range of variation. As fires become more severe, forest managers are searching for strategies that can restore forest health and reduce fire risk. However, management activities are only one part of a suite of disturbance vectors that shape forest conditions.

Burn severity and pre-fire seral state interact to shape vegetation responses to fire in a young, western Cascade Range forest

Year of Publication
2022
Publication Type

Wildfire size and frequency are increasing across the western U.S., affecting large areas of young, second-growth forest originating after logging and burning. Despite their prevalence in the western Cascade landscape, we have a poor understanding of how these young stands respond to fire or how their responses differ from older, undisturbed forests, which are well studied.