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Shifting disturbance regimes can have cascading effects on many ecosystems processes. This is particularly true when the scale of the disturbance no longer matches the regeneration strategy of the dominant vegetation. In the yellow pine and mixed…
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For millennia, wildfires have markedly influenced forests and non-forested landscapes of the western United States (US), and they are increasingly seen as having substantial impacts on society and nature. There is growing concern over what kinds and…
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Alpine treelines are expected to move upward in a warming climate, but downward in response to increases in wildfire. We studied the effects of fire on vegetation structure and composition across four alpine treeline ecotones extending from Abies…
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Reconstructing historical fire regimes is difficult at the landscape scale, but essential to determine whether modern fires are unnaturally severe. I synthesized evidence across 725,000 ha of montane forests in the San Juan Mountains, Colorado, from…
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Fire refugia are landscape elements that remain unburned or minimally affected by fire, thereby supporting postfire ecosystem function, biodiversity, and resilience to disturbances. Although fire refugia have been studied across continents, scales,…
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High severity fire: evaluating its key drivers and mapping its probability across western US forests
Wildland fire is a critical process in forests of the western United States (US). Variation in fire behavior, which is heavily influenced by fuel loading, terrain, weather, and vegetation type, leads to heterogeneity in fire severity across…
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Mixed severity wildfires burn large areas in western North America forest ecosystems in most years and this is expected to continue or increase with climate change. Little is understood about vegetation recovery and changing fuel conditions more…
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Within the ancestral homelands of the Confederated Salish Kootenai Tribes (CSKT), the Fire Continuum Conference (May 2018) discussed the complexity of wildland fire and fuels research and management. The CSKT fieldtrip took place on the Flathead…
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Extensive high‐severity wildfires have driven major losses of ponderosa pine and mixed‐conifer forests in the southwestern United States, in some settings catalyzing enduring conversions to non‐forested vegetation types. Management interventions to…
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Current assessments of the ecological impacts of fires, termed burn severity, investigate the degree to which an ecosystem has changed due to a fire and typically encompass both vegetation and soil effects. Burn severity assessments at local to…
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Given regional increases in fire activity in western North American forests, understanding how fire influences the extent and effects of subsequent fires is particularly relevant. Remotely sensed estimates of fire effects have allowed for spatial…
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An understanding of how historical fire and structure in dry forests (ponderosa pine, dry mixed conifer) varied across the western USA remains incomplete. Yet, fire strongly affects ecosystem services, and forest restoration programs are underway.…
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The emergence of large‐scale fire classifications and products informed by remote sensing data has enabled opportunities to include variability or heterogeneity as part of modern fire regime classifications. Currently, basic fire metrics such as…
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The development of frameworks for better-understanding ecological syndromes and putative evolutionary strategies of plant adaptation to fire has recently received a flurry of attention, including a new model hypothesizing that plants have diverged…
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Building resilience to natural disturbances is a key to managing forests for adaptation to climate change. To date, most climate adaptation guidance has focused on recommendations for frequent‐fire forests, leaving few published guidelines for…
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Components of a fire regime have long been estimated using mean-value-based ordinary least-squares regression. But, forest and fire managers require predictions beyond the mean because impacts of small and large fires on forest ecosystems and…
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Post-fire tree mortality models are vital tools used by forest land managers to predict fire effects, estimate delayed mortality and develop management prescriptions. We evaluated the performance of mortality models within the First Order Fire…
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High-severity fire: Evaluating its key drivers and mapping its probability across western US forests
Wildland fire is a critical process in forests of the western United States (US). Variation in fire behavior, which is heavily influenced by fuel loading, terrain, weather, and vegetation type, leads to heterogeneity in fire severity across…
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High-severity fires in dry conifer forests of the United States Southwest have created large (>1000 ha) treeless areas that are unprecedented in the regional historical record. These fires have reset extensive portions of Southwestern ponderosa…
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Increases in area burned and fire size have been reported across a wide range of forest and shrubland types in the Western United States in recent decades, but little is known about potential changes in fire regimes of piñon and juniper land cover…
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