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Dry mixed-conifer forests are widespread in the interior Pacific Northwest, but their historical fire regimes are poorly characterized, in particular the relative mix of low- and high-severity fire. We reconstructed a multi-century history of fire…
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Over the past several decades, size and extent of wildfires have been increasing in the western United States (Westerling et al. 2006; Littell et al. 2009). As the number and size of recent wildfires increases across landscapes, fire managers are…
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(1) Background: Frequent fire, climate variability, and human activities collectively influence savanna ecosystems. The relative role of these three factors likely varies on interannual, decadal, and centennial timescales. Here, we tested if Euro-…
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Context: Lack of quantitative observations of extent, frequency, and severity of large historical fires constrains awareness of departure of contemporary conditions from those that demonstrated resistance and resilience to frequent fire and…
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Before the advent of intensive forest management and fire suppression, western North American forests exhibited a naturally occurring resistance and resilience to wildfires and other disturbances. Resilience, which encompasses resistance, reflects…
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Conifer forests of the western US are historically well adapted to wildfires, but current warming is creating novel disturbance regimes that may fundamentally change future forest dynamics. Stand‐replacing fires can catalyze forest reorganization by…
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Like many of us at the Forest Service, I started my career in fire, and I have always relied on Smokey Bear. Fire prevention is part of our cultural DNA.
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Forests store a large amount of terrestrial carbon, but this storage capacity is vulnerable to wildfire. Combustion, and subsequent tree mortality and soil erosion, can lead to increased carbon release and decreased carbon uptake. Previous work has…
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This year, Smokey Bear turns 75. Think about that for a second-a public service announcement campaign just turned three-quarters of a century old! The Smokey program is the longest running public service announcement campaign in U.S. history and is…
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Unraveling the effects of climate and land use on historical fire regimes provides important insights into broader human–fire–climate dynamics, which are necessary for ecologically based forest management. We developed a spatial human land‐use model…
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During the End-Permian mass extinction event (EPME) there is extensive evidence for depletion of oxygen in the marine realm. Atmospheric models based upon biogeochemical cycling predict a comparable decline leading up to this event and have been…
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The national symbol of forest fire prevention, Smokey Bear, and the slogan, 'Only you can prevent forest fires!' already existed when a group of firefighters on the Capitan Gap Fire found an orphaned bear cub clinging to a tree after a flareup. The…
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Smokey Bear’s story begins with World War II. In spring 1942, a few months after Japanese planes had attacked Pearl Harbor, an enemy submarine fired shells that exploded near an oil field close to the Los Padres National Forest. U.S. Forest Service…
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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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To enhance understanding of how climate and humans influenced historical fire occurrence in the montane forests of Jasper National Park, we crossdated fire-scar and tree age samples from 172 plots. We tested effects of drought and climatic variation…
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Averaging tree-ring measurements from multiple individuals is one of the most common procedures in dendrochronology. It serves to filter out noise from individual differences between trees, such as competition, height, and micro-site effects, which…
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An understanding of how historical fire and structure in dry forests (ponderosa pine, dry mixed conifer) varied across the western United States remains incomplete. Yet, fire strongly affects ecosystem services, and forest restoration programs are…
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This article covers the history of fire activities since 1910 and how recovery can depend on one of three methods in the forest - resistance, restoration, and resilience.
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Historic frequency and severity of fire in whitebark pine forests of the Cascade Mountain Range, USA
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…
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Dendroecology is the science that dates tree rings to their exact calendar year of formation to study processes that influence forest ecology (e.g., Speer 2010 [1], Amoroso et al., 2017 [2]). Reconstruction of past fire regimes is a core application…
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