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Displaying 121 - 140 of 570

Fuels reduction treatments to mitigate fire behavior are common in ponderosa pine ecosystems of the western United States. While initial impacts of fuel treatments have been reported, less is known about treatment longevity as live and dead fuels…
Author(s): Sharon M. Hood, Christopher R. Keyes, Katelynn J. Bowen, Duncan C. Lutes, Carl A. Seielstad
Year Published:

Climate change is causing increased wildfire activity across the western US and creating post-fire conditions that are warmer and drier than they were in the past. Scientists and managers are concerned with the potential for post-fire tree…
Author(s): Kimberley T. Davis, Lacey Hankin
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:

Late-1800s land surveys were used to reconstruct historical forest structure and fire over more than 235,000 ha in ponderosa pine and mixed conifer landscapes of the San Juan Mountains, Colorado, to further understand differences among regional…
Author(s): William L. Baker
Year Published:

Recent decades have witnessed an escalation in the social, economic, and ecological impacts of wildfires worldwide. Wildfire losses stem from the complex interplay of social and ecological forces at multiple scales, including global climate change,…
Author(s): Ronald L. Schumann, Miranda H. Mockrin, Alexandra D. Syphard, Joshua Whittaker, Owen F. Price, Cassandra Johnson-Gaither, Christopher T. Emrich, Van Butsic
Year Published:

Following a wildfire, regeneration to forest can take decades to centuries and is no longer assured in many western U.S. environments given escalating wildfire severity and warming trends. After large fire years, managers prioritize where to…
Author(s): Nicholas A. Povak, Derek J. Churchill, C. Alina Cansler, Paul F. Hessburg, Van R. Kane, Jonathan T. Kane, James A. Lutz, Andrew J. Larson
Year Published:

After generations of fire-suppression policy, Indigenous fire management (IFM) is being reactivated as one way to mitigate wildfire in fire-prone ecosystems. Research has documented that IFM also mitigates carbon emissions, improves livelihoods and…
Author(s): William Nikolakis, Emma Roberts, Ngaio Hotte, Russell Myers Ross
Year Published:

Research Highlights: This experiment compares a range of combinations of harvest, prescribed fire, and wildfire. Leveraging a 30-year-old forest management-driven experiment, we explored the recovery of woody species composition, regeneration of the…
Author(s): R. Kasten Dumroese, Martin F. Jurgensen, Deborah S. Page-Dumroese
Year Published:

Limber pine (Pinus flexilis), an understudied tree species important to montane and subalpine ecosystems, is listed as endangered in Alberta. Dispersal of seeds to newly disturbed, open areas by Clark's nutcracker (Nucifraga columbiana) is expected…
Author(s): Denyse A. Dawe, Vernon S. Peters, Michael D. Flannigan
Year Published:

Ecological droughts are deficits in soil–water availability that induce threshold-like ecosystem responses, such as causing altered or degraded plant-community conditions, which can be exceedingly difficult to reverse. However, 'ecological drought'…
Author(s): Rory O'Connor, Matthew J. Germino, David M Barnard, Caitlin M. Andrews, John Bradford, David S. Pilliod, Robert S. Arkle, Robert K. Shriver
Year Published:

The mountainous grassland ecosystem in Golden Gate National Park (South Africa) has post-fire ecological resilience. However, vegetation species composition and structure can alter when the ecosystem continually has uncontrolled fires. This study…
Author(s): Efosa G. Adagbasa, Samuel A. Adelabu, Tom W. Okello
Year Published:

Legacy effects from one disturbance may influence successional pathways by amplifying or buffering forest regeneration after the next disturbance. We assessed vegetation and tree regeneration in non-serotinous Sierra lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta…
Author(s): Lucas B. Harris, Stacy Drury, Alan H. Taylor
Year Published:

With the effects of climate change expected to intensify over the coming century, land managers will require more proactive and novel approaches to conserve and restore threatened ecosystems. In the US Intermountain West, quaking aspen (Populus…
Author(s): Alexander A. Howe, Simon M. Landhäusser, Owen T. Burney, James N. Long, Randall D. Violett, Karen Mock
Year Published:

Globally, savanna ecosystems are shifting outside of “safe operating spaces” due to removal of their primary self-reinforcing feedback—fire—and subsequent erosion of disturbance legacies. Restoring savannas will require reinstating fire feedbacks.…
Author(s): Caleb P. Roberts, Victoria M. Donovan, Sarah M. Nodskov, Emma C. Keele, Craig D. Allen, David A. Wedin, Dirac Twidwell
Year Published:

Wildfires are ecosystem‐level drivers of structure and function in many vegetated biomes. While numerous studies have emphasized the benefits of fire to ecosystems, large wildfires have also been associated with the loss of ecosystem services and…
Author(s): Victoria M. Donovan, Dirac Twidwell, Daniel R. Uden, Tsegaye Tadesse, Brian D. Wardlow, Christine H. Bielski, Matthew O. Jones, Brady W. Allred, David E. Naugle, Craig R. Allen
Year Published:

Increasingly frequent large wildfires in the western US raise questions about the effects of climate and site-level factors on forest ecosystem resilience. This study presents findings from seedling and sapling surveys conducted across 179 sites 15–…
Author(s): Angela Boag, Mark J. Ducey, Michael W. Palace, Joel Hartter
Year Published:

Increased wildfire activity combined with warm and dry post-fire conditions may undermine the mechanisms maintaining forest resilience to wildfires, potentially causing ecosystem transitions, or fire-catalyzed vegetation shifts. Stand-replacing fire…
Author(s): Kimberley T. Davis, Philip E. Higuera, Solomon Z. Dobrowski, Sean A. Parks, John T. Abatzoglou, Monica T. Rother, Thomas T. Veblen
Year Published:

Fire exclusion since the 1930s across western U.S. landscapes has greatly altered fire regimes and fuel conditions. After a lightning-caused fire swept through the center of the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area in 2003, researchers initiated a…
Author(s): Sarah Flanary, Robert E. Keane
Year Published:

Large wildfires (>50,000 ha) are becoming increasingly common in semi‐arid landscapes of the western United States. Although fuel reduction treatments are used to mitigate potential wildfire effects, they can be overwhelmed in wind‐driven…
Author(s): Susan J. Prichard, Nicholas A. Povak, Maureen C. Kennedy, David W. Peterson
Year Published:

The destructive wildfires that occurred recently in the western US starkly foreshadow the possible future of forest ecosystems and human communities in the region. With increases in the area burned by severe wildfire in seasonally dry forests…
Author(s): Scott L. Stephens, Anthony L. Westerling, Matthew D. Hurteau, M. Zachariah Peery, Courtney Schultz, Sally Thompson
Year Published: