Forests dominated by Douglas-fir and western hemlock in the Pacific Northwest of the United States have strongly influenced concepts and policy concerning old-growth forest conservation.
During the 21st century, climate-driven changes in fire regimes will be a key agent of change in forests of the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW).
The “pyroclimatic hypothesis” proposed by F. Biondi and colleagues provides a basis for testable expectations about climatic and other controls of fire regimes. This hypothesis asserts an a priori relationship between the occurrence of widespread fire and values of a relevant climatic index.
The 12-site National Fire and Fire Surrogate study (FFS) was a multivariate experiment that evaluated ecological consequences of alternative fuel-reduction treatments in seasonally dry forests of the US. Each site was a replicated experiment with a common design that compared an un-manipulated control, prescribed fire, mechanical and mechanical + fire treatments.
Fire severity influences post-burn structure and composition of a forest and the potential for a future fire to burn through the area. The effects of fire on forests with mixed severity fire regimes are difficult to predict and interpret because the quantity, structure, and composition of forest fuels vary considerably.
In temperate conifer forests of the Western USA, there is active debate whether fuels reduction treatments and bioenergy production result in decreased carbon emissions and increased carbon sequestration compared to a no-action alternative.
The interaction of fires, where one fire burns into another recently burned area, is receiving increased attention from scientists and land managers wishing to describe the role of fire scars in affecting landscape pattern and future fire spread.
The view that subalpine forest vegetation dynamics in western North America are "driven" by a particular disturbance type (i.e. fire) has shaped our understanding of their disturbance regimes.
Aim Wildfire is often considered more severe now than historically in dry forests of the western United States. Tree-ring reconstructions, which suggest that historical dry forests were park-like with large, old trees maintained by low-severity fires,are from small, scattered studies.
Understanding the causes and consequences of wildfires in forests of the western United States requires integrated information about fire, climate changes, and human activity on multiple temporal scales.