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Wildfire is a ubiquitous disturbance agent in subalpine forests in western North America. Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia), a dominant tree species in these forests, is largely resilient to high-severity fires, but this resilience may…
Author(s): Barrie V. Chileen, Kendra K. McLauchlan, Philip E. Higuera, Meredith Parish, Bryan N. Shuman
Year Published:

Boreal forest and tundra biomes are key components of the Earth system because the mobilization of large carbon stocks and changes in energy balance could act as positive feedbacks to ongoing climate change. In Alaska, wildfire is a primary driver…
Author(s): Tyler J. Hoecker, Philip E. Higuera, Ryan Kelly, Feng Sheng Hu
Year Published:

Warm summer temperatures and longer fire seasons are promoting larger, and in some cases, more fires that are severe in low- and mid-elevation, dry mixed-conifer forests of the Northern Rocky Mountains (NRM). Long-term historical fire conditions and…
Author(s): Dave McWethy, Mio Alt, Elena Argiriadis, Dario Battistel, Richard G. Everett, Gregory T. Pederson
Year Published:

Fire refugia—locations that burn less severely or less frequently than surrounding areas—support late-successional and old-growth forest structure and function. This study investigates the influence of topography and fuels on the probability of…
Author(s): Garrett W. Meigs, Christopher J. Dunn, Sean A. Parks, Meg A. Krawchuk
Year Published:

Background: Ecological disturbance is a major driver of ecosystem structure and evolutionary selection, and theory predicts that the frequency and/or intensity of disturbance should determine its effects on communities. However, adaptations of…
Author(s): Jesse E. D. Miller, Hugh Safford
Year Published:

Increases in burned area across the western US since the mid‐1980’s have been widely documented and linked partially to climate factors, yet evaluations of trends in fire severity are lacking. Here, we evaluate fire severity trends and their…
Author(s): Sean A. Parks, John T. Abatzoglou
Year Published:

Paleoecological records detailing fire and vegetation histories during previous interglacials are extremely rare. We present a unique, high-resolution, 10-m long record of fire from a high elevation conifer-dominated site - the Snowmastodon (Ziegler…
Author(s): R. Scott Anderson, Gonzalo Jiménez-Moreno, Monique Belanger, Christy E. Briles
Year Published:

Riparian forests link terrestrial and freshwater communities and therefore understanding the landscape context of fire regimes in these forests is critical to fully understanding the landscape ecology. However, few direct studies of fire regimes…
Author(s): Grant Harley, Emily K. Heyerdahl, James D. Johnston, Diana L. Olson
Year Published:

We discovered unique Douglas-fir open woodlands in the Umatilla National Forest using historical surveys. Historical ponderosa pine forests of the western United States are transitioning to denser forests comprised of a greater proportion of fire-…
Author(s): Brice B. Hanberry, Donald Justice, David Powell
Year Published:

Background: Prairie-forest ecotones are ecologically important for biodiversity and ecological processes. While these ecotones cover small areas, their sharp gradients in land cover promote rich ecological interaction and high conservation value.…
Author(s): Penelope Morgan, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Eva K. Strand, Stephen C. Bunting, James P. Riser, John T. Abatzoglou, Max W. Nielsen-Pincus, Mara Johnson
Year Published:

FIRE PHOTOGRAPHY BEGAN EARLY. As soon as photographs could replace lithographs in magazines and newspapers, photos of firefights, the aftermath of bad burns, and occasionally even flame and smoke appeared. When Harper’s Weekly covered the 1871 and…
Author(s): Stephen Pyne
Year Published:

Local and regional species extirpations may become more common as changing climate and disturbance regimes accelerate species’ in situ range contractions. Identifying locations that function as both climate and disturbance refugia is critical for…
Author(s): William M. Downing, James D. Johnston, Meg A. Krawchuk, Andrew G. Merschel, Joseph H. Rausch
Year Published:

Background: Prairie-forest ecotones are ecologically important for biodiversity and ecological processes. While these ecotones cover small areas, their sharp gradients in land cover promote rich ecological interaction and high conservation value.…
Author(s): Penelope Morgan, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Eva K. Strand, Stephen C. Bunting, James P. Riser, John T. Abatzoglou, Max W. Nielsen-Pincus, Mara Johnson
Year Published:

Fire offers a special perspective by which to understand the Earth being remade by humans. Fire is integrative, so intrinsically interdisciplinary. Fire use is unique to humans, so a tracer of humanity's ecological impacts. Anthropogenic fire…
Author(s): Stephen Pyne
Year Published:

Acetylene is a short‐lived trace gas produced during combustion of fossil fuels, biomass, and biofuels. Biomass burning is likely the only major source of acetylene in the preindustrial atmosphere, making ice core acetylene a powerful tool for…
Author(s): Melinda R. Nicewonger, Murat Aydin, Michael J. Prather, Eric S. Saltzman
Year Published:

As the climate warms, drought will increasingly occur under elevated temperatures, placing forest ecosystems at growing risk of extensive dieback and mortality. In some cases, increases in tree density following early 20th-century fire suppression…
Author(s): Alan J. Tepley, Sharon M. Hood, Christopher R. Keyes, Anna Sala
Year Published:

Background: Prairie-forest ecotones are ecologically important for biodiversity and ecological processes. While these ecotones cover small areas, their sharp gradients in land cover promote rich ecological interaction and high conservation value.…
Author(s): Penelope Morgan, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Eva K. Strand, Stephen C. Bunting, James P. Riser, John T. Abatzoglou, Max W. Nielsen-Pincus, Mara Johnson
Year Published:

Increases in burned area across the western US since the mid‐1980’s have been widely documented and linked partially to climate factors, yet evaluations of trends in fire severity are lacking. Here, we evaluate fire severity trends and their…
Author(s): Sean A. Parks, John T. Abatzoglou
Year Published:

Background: Prairie-forest ecotones are ecologically important for biodiversity and ecological processes. While these ecotones cover small areas, their sharp gradients in land cover promote rich ecological interaction and high conservation value.…
Author(s): Penelope Morgan, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Eva K. Strand, Stephen C. Bunting, James P. Riser, John T. Abatzoglou, Max W. Nielsen-Pincus, Mara Johnson
Year Published:

Climate-driven increases in disturbance frequency and extent augment the potential for compounded disturbances. Drawing on well-studied forests that experienced successive disturbances, we asked: (1) how does post-fire cover of litter, herbaceous…
Author(s): Nathan S. Gill, Daniel Jarvis, John Rogan, Dominik Kulakowski
Year Published: