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High-severity fires and short-interval reburns strongly influence forest structure and composition and may overwhelm forest ecosystem resilience and catalyze persistent shifts to non-forest conditions. Recent increases in annual area burned and…
Author(s): Melissa Jaffe, Mark R. Kreider, David L.R. Affleck, Philip E. Higuera, Carl A. Seielstad, Sean A. Parks, Andrew J. Larson
Year Published:

Background Trends of increasing area burned in many regions worldwide are leading to more locations experiencing short-interval reburns (i.e., fires occurring two or more times in the same place within 1–3 decades). Field and satellite indices of…
Author(s): Saba Saberi, Brian J. Harvey
Year Published:

In fire-prone forests, postfire tree recovery may be limited by climate conditions and fire activity that exceed the range of conditions under which these forests evolved, leading to major shifts in forest structure and composition. Transformations…
Author(s): Tyler J. Hoecker, Monica G. Turner
Year Published:

We investigated the relative importance of daily fire weather, landscape position, climate, recent forest and fuels management, and fire history to explaining patterns of remotely-sensed burn severity – as measured by the Relativized Burn Ratio – in…
Author(s): C. Alina Cansler, Van R. Kane, Paul F. Hessburg, Jonathan T. Kane, Sean M.A. Jeronimo, James A. Lutz, Nicholas A. Povak, Derek J. Churchill, Andrew J. Larson
Year Published:

Recent increases in fire frequency and severity across the western US are triggering abrupt changes in ecosystem structure and composition, especially in lower montane forests, but consequences of fire-regime change for mesic, mixed-conifer forests…
Author(s): Tyler J. Hoecker, Monica G. Turner
Year Published:

Changing wildfire regimes are causing rapid shifts in forests worldwide. In particular, forested landscapes that burn repeatedly in relatively quick succession may be at risk of conversion when pre‐fire vegetation cannot recover between fires. Fire…
Author(s): William M. Downing, Garrett W. Meigs, Matthew J. Gregory, Meg A. Krawchuk
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Determining whether forest landscapes can maintain their resilience to fire – that is, their ability to rebound and sustain – given rapid climate change and increasing fire activity is a pressing challenge throughout the American West. Many western…
Author(s): Monica G. Turner
Year Published:

Accumulation of dead woody material is a critical management concern following wildfires, especially given the possibility of subsequent wildfires. Forest structure and fuel accumulation are largely driven by site climatic conditions, so variability…
Author(s): Camille Stevens-Rumann, Andrew T. Hudak, Penelope Morgan, Alex Arnold, Eva K. Strand
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:

Wildfires are a significant agent of disturbance in forests and highly sensitive to climate change. Short-interval fires and high severity (mortality-causing) fires in particular, may catalyze rapid and substantial ecosystem shifts by eliminating…
Author(s): Brian Buma, Shelby A. Weiss, Kathy Geier-Hayes, Melissa S. Lucash
Year Published:

Fire exclusion has dramatically altered historically fire adapted forests across western North America. In response, forest managers reduce forest fuels with mechanical thinning and/or prescribed burning to alter fire behavior, with additional…
Author(s): Harold S. Zald, Becky K. Kerns, Michelle A. Day
Year Published:

Wilderness areas offer value to society as a source of scientific information. We used fire perimeter records from the upper South Fork Flathead River watershed (Montana) to characterize the area burned one or more times during three periods: the…
Author(s): Andrew J. Larson, Julia Berkey, Colin T. Maher, Wyatt Trull, R. Travis Belote, Carol Miller
Year Published:

Fires shape the biogeochemistry and functioning of many ecosystems, and fire frequencies are changing across much of the globe. Frequent fires can change soil carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) storage by altering the quantity and chemistry of plant inputs…
Author(s): Adam F. A. Pellegrini, Sarah E. Hobbie, Peter B. Reich, Ari A. Jumpponen, E.N. Jack Brookshire, Anthony C. Caprio, Corli Coetsee, Robert B. Jackson
Year Published:

In frequent‐fire forests, wildland fire acts as a self‐ regulating process creating forest structures that consist of a fine‐grained mosaic of isolated trees, tree groups of various sizes, and non‐treed openings. Though the self‐regulation of forest…
Author(s): Scott M. Ritter, Chad M. Hoffman, Michael A. Battaglia, Camille Stevens-Rumann, William E. Mell
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Camille Stevens-Rumann, Susan J. Prichard, Penelope Morgan
Year Published:

Subalpine forests in the northern Rocky Mountains have been resilient to stand-replacing fires that historically burned at 100- to 300-year intervals. Fire intervals are projected to decline drastically as climate warms, and forests that reburn…
Author(s): Monica G. Turner, Kristin H. Braziunas, Winslow D. Hansen, Brian J. Harvey
Year Published:

Background:Short-term post-fire field studies have shown that native shrub cover in chaparral ecosystems negatively affects introduced cover, which is influenced by burn severity, elevation, aspect, and climate. Using the southern California 2003…
Author(s): April G. Smith, Beth A. Newingham, Andrew T. Hudak, Benjamin C. Bright
Year Published:

Previously burned areas can influence the occurrence, extent, and severity of subsequent wildfires, which may influence expenditures on large fires. We develop a conceptual model of how interactions of fires with previously burned areas may…
Author(s): Erin J. Belval, Christopher D. O'Connor, Matthew P. Thompson, Michael S. Hand
Year Published:

Background: In the Inland Pacific Northwest of the United States, fire is a dominant driver of ecological change. Within wildfire perimeters, fire effects often vary considerably and typically include remnant patches of unburned islands. As fires…
Author(s): Anthony Martinez, Arjan J. H. Meddens, Crystal A. Kolden, Eva K. Strand, Andrew T. Hudak
Year Published:

Sagebrush is one of the most imperiled ecosystems in western North America, having lost about half of its original 62 million hectare extent. Annual grass invasions are known to be increasing wildfire occurrence and burned area, but the lasting…
Author(s): Adam L. Mahood, Jennifer Balch
Year Published: