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Displaying 1 - 20 of 69

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) is a foundation species of high elevation forest ecosystems in the Cascade Mountain Range of Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia. We examined fire evidence on 55 fire history sites located in the…
Author(s): Michael P. Murray, Joel Siderius
Year Published:

Fire may remove or create dead wood aboveground, but it is less clear how high severity burning of soils affects belowground microbial communities and soil processes, and for how long. In this study, we investigated soil fungal and bacterial…
Author(s): Jane E. Smith, Laurel A. Kluber, Tara N. Jennings, Donaraye McKay, Greg Brenner, Elizabeth W. Sulzman
Year Published:

Tree-age data in combination with fire scars improved inverse-distance-weighted spatial modelling of historical fire boundaries and intervals for the Darkwoods, British Columbia, Canada. Fire-scarred trees provided direct evidence of fire. The…
Author(s): Gregory A. Greene, Lori D. Daniels
Year Published:

Previous research has focused on quantifying fuel loadings and using operational fire behavior models to understand changes in fire severity following MPB outbreaks. In this study however, researchers used direct field measurements taken from the…
Author(s): Northwest Fire Science Consortium
Year Published:

Wildfires shape the distribution and structure of vegetation across the inland northwestern United States. However, fire activity is expected to increase given the current rate of climate change, with uncertain outcomes. A fire impact that has not…
Author(s): Arjan J. H. Meddens, Crystal A. Kolden, James A. Lutz
Year Published:

Understanding the causes and consequences of rapid environmental change is an essential scientific frontier, particularly given the threat of climate- and land use-induced changes in disturbance regimes. In western North America, recent widespread…
Author(s): Garrett W. Meigs, Harold S. Zald, John L. Campbell, William S. Keeton, Robert E. Kennedy
Year Published:

In heterogeneous forest landscapes prone to wildfires, accurate classification of the fire regime beyond direct observations and records is difficult. This is in part due to the methods used to reconstruct historical fires in complex, heterogeneous…
Author(s): Vanessa Stretch, Ze'ev Gedalof, Jacklyn Cockburn, Michael F. Pisaric
Year Published:

Increasing rates of natural disturbances under a warming climate raise important questions about how multiple disturbances interact. Escalating wildfire activity in recent decades has resulted in some forests re-burning in short succession, but how…
Author(s): Brian J. Harvey, Daniel C. Donato, Monica G. Turner
Year Published:

Like many fire-adapted ecosystems, decades of fire exclusion policy in the Rocky Mountains and Foothills natural regions of southern Alberta, Canada are raising concern over the loss of ecological integrity. Departure from historical conditions is…
Author(s): Michael D. Flannigan, Brad C. Hawkes, Marc-Andre Parisien, Marie-Pierre Rogeau, Rick Arthur
Year Published:

The 2000 Valley Complex wildfire burned in steep montane forests with ash cap soils in western Montana, USA. The effects of high soil burn severity on forest soil hydrologic function were examined using rainfall simulations (100mmh-1 for 1 h) on 0.5…
Author(s): Peter R. Robichaud, Joseph W. Wagenbrenner, Frederick B. Pierson, Kenneth E. Spaeth, Louise E. Ashmun, Corey A. Moffet
Year Published:

Understanding the rates, trajectories, and spatial variability in succession following severe wildfire is increasingly important for forest managers in western North America and critical for anticipating the resilience or vulnerability of forested…
Author(s): Monica G. Turner, William H. Romme, Daniel B. Tinker, Daniel C. Donato, Brian J. Harvey
Year Published:

Widespread tree mortality caused by outbreaks of native bark beetles (Circulionidae: Scolytinae) in recent decades has raised concern among scientists and forest managers about whether beetle outbreaks fuel more ecologically severe forest fires and…
Author(s): Brian J. Harvey, Daniel C. Donato, Monica G. Turner
Year Published:

Both satellite imagery and spatial fire effects models are valuable tools for generating burn severity maps that are useful to fire scientists and resource managers. The purpose of this study was to test a new mapping approach that integrates…
Author(s): Eva C. Karau, Pamela G. Sikkink, Robert E. Keane, Gregory K. Dillon
Year Published:

The degree to which recent bark beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreaks may influence fire severity and postfire tree regeneration is of heightened interest to resource managers throughout western North America, but empirical data on actual fire…
Author(s): Brian J. Harvey, Daniel C. Donato, William H. Romme, Monica G. Turner
Year Published:

Wildland fire is an important natural process in many ecosystems. However, fire exclusion has reduced frequency of fire and area burned in many dry forest types, which may affect vegetation structure and composition, and potential fire behavior. In…
Author(s): Sean A. Parks, Carol Miller, Cara R. Nelson, Zachary A. Holden
Year Published:

The ecological effects of forest fires burning with high severity are long-lived and have the greatest impact on vegetation successional trajectories, as compared to low-to-moderate severity fires. The primary drivers of high severity fire are…
Author(s): Donovan Birch, Penelope Morgan, Crystal A. Kolden, Andrew T. Hudak, Alistair M. S. Smith
Year Published:

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.…
Author(s): Casey Teske, Carl A. Seielstad, Lloyd P. Queen
Year Published:

For decades, wildfire studies have utilized fire occurrence as the primary data source for investigating the causes and effects of wildfire on the landscape. Fire occurrence data fall primarily into two categories: ignition points and perimeter…
Author(s): Crystal A. Kolden, James A. Lutz, Carl H. Key, Jonathan T. Kane, Jan W. van Wagtendonk
Year Published:

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is a threatened keystone species in subalpine zones of Western North America that plays a role in watershed dynamics and maintenance of high elevation biodiversity (Schwandt, 2006). Whitebark pine has experienced…
Author(s): Paul E. Trusty, Cathy L. Cripps
Year Published:

Forests characterized by mixed-severity fires occupy a broad moisture gradient between lower elevation forests typified by low-severity fires and higher elevation forests in which high-severity, stand replacing fires are the norm. Mixed-severity…
Author(s): David A. Perry, Paul F. Hessburg, Carl N. Skinner, Thomas A. Spies, Scott L. Stephens, Alan H. Taylor, Jerry F. Franklin, Brenda McComb, Gregg M. Riegel
Year Published: