Fire-caused tree mortality has major impacts on forest ecosystems. One primary cause of post-fire tree mortality in non-resprouting species is crown scorch, the percentage of foliage in a crown that is killed by heat. Despite its importance, the heat required to kill foliage is not well-understood.
Context: Ecological functions provided by fire refugia are critical for supporting conifer forest resiliency under increased fire activity across the western United States. The spatial distribution and persistence of fire refugia over time are uncertain as fire-injured trees continue to die over subsequent years post-fire.
Gap-based silviculture, which we define as the creation and maintenance of multi-aged stands through the periodic harvesting of discrete canopy gaps, provides a potential mechanism for converting previously high-graded stands into more heterogeneous, multi-aged structures.
Natural resource managers (managers) value and use scientific information to inform their decision-making process in a variety of ways. The scientific information managers use depends on a variety of factors, including the source of the information and ease of access.
Extreme fire spread events rapidly burn large areas with disproportionate impacts on people and ecosystems. Such events are associated with warmer and drier fire seasons and are expected to increase in the future.
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.
Background: In response to increasing risk of extreme wildfire across western North America, forest managers are proactively implementing fuel treatments.
Small-scale variation in wildfire behavior may cause large differences in belowground bacterial and fungal communities with consequences for belowground microbial diversity, community assembly, and function.
Background: The increasing size and severity of western U.S. wildfires in recent years has generated greater attention towards post-wildfire response and recovery. Post-fire governance requires coordinating response and recovery capacities across jurisdictions, landscapes, and time scales.