Climate change is reducing winter snowpack and advancing spring snowmelt across the western United States (US), interacting with El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) teleconnections that drive spatially predictable interannual fluctuations that contribute to high- or low-snow winters.
Forests are vital life-preserving assets, essential for biodiversity, human health, climate change mitigation, and economic stability. Yet, they are increasingly threatened by forest fires, which undermine these benefits.
Communities can face significant risk from wildfire, often compounded by climate change and legacies of industrial forest management.
Existing research indicates that NGOs can serve important roles during recovery from wildfires and other hazard events. Yet less work explores the specific, place-based conditions that influence NGO participation in the recovery process, or the specific tactics they might use when facilitating the transfer of knowledge and resources that meet emergent recovery needs.
In the western US, increased tree density in dry conifer forests from fire exclusion has caused tree growth declines, which is being compounded by hotter multi-year droughts. The reintroduction of frequent, low-severity wildfire reduces forest density by removing fire-intolerant trees, which can reduce competition for water and improve tree growth response to drought.
Background: Prescribed burning is an effective tool for reducing fuels in many forest types, yet there have been few opportunities to study forest resilience to wildfire in areas previously treated.
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.
In the fire-prone and fire-adapted landscape of the Rogue River Basin of southwestern Oregon, communities mobilize to prepare, respond, and recover from wildfire while modifying the current social and ecological system.
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.
In 2023, all regions of British Columbia (BC) experienced record-breaking fire weather and wildfires, with extreme behavior and social-ecological effects. In total, 2245 wildfires burned 2840 545 hectares. Contemporary wildfires are the culmination of a century of altered human–forest–wildfire relationships, exacerbated by climate change.