management

Background

Theory predicts that effective environmental governance requires that the scales of management account for the scales of environmental processes. A good example is community wildfire protection planning. Plan boundaries that are too narrowly defined may miss sources of wildfire risk originating at larger geographic scales whereas boundaries that are too broadly defined dilute resources.

Climate  change  is  altering  fire  regimes  and  post-fire  conditions,  contributing  to  relatively  rapid  transformation  of  landscapes  across  the  western  US.

Wildland fire incident commanders make wildfire response decisions within an increasingly complex socio-environmental context. Threats to human safety and property, along with public pressures and agency cultures, often lead commanders to emphasize full suppression.

We indexed 8,970 scientific publications on forest fires in order to bridge the gap between research and policy discussions on forest fires. Journal articles and conference papers dominated the literature, with an emphasis on environmental science, agricultural and biological sciences, earth and planetary sciences, engineering, and computer science.

An exponential rise in the atmospheric vapour pressure deficit (VPD) is among the most consequential impacts of climate change in terrestrial ecosystems. Rising VPD has negative and cascading effects on nearly all aspects of plant function including photosynthesis, water status, growth and survival.

Background

A clear understanding of the connectivity, structure, and composition of wildland fuels is essential for effective wildfire management. However, fuel typing and mapping are challenging owing to a broad diversity of fuel conditions and their spatial and temporal heterogeneity.

Large and downed woody fuels remaining behind a wildfire’s flame front tend to burn in a smoldering regime, producing large quantities of toxic gases and particulate emissions, which deteriorates air quality and compromises human health. Smoldering burning rates are affected by fuel type and size, the amount of oxygen reaching the surface, and heat losses to the surroundings.

Federal agencies responsible for wildland fire management face increasing needs for personnel as fire seasons lengthen and fire size continues to grow, yet federal agencies have struggled to