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Analysis and 14C dating of charcoal fragments ≥2 mm buried in mineral soils make it possible to obtain a stand-scale portrait of Holocene fires that occurred in well-drained, fire-prone environments, as well as changes in forest stand composition…
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Fire management around the world is now undergoing extensive review, with a move toward fire management plans that maintain biodiversity and other ecosystems services, while at the same time mitigating the negative impacts to people and property.…
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The Earth has experienced large changes in global and regional climates over the past one million years. Understanding processes and feedbacks that control those past environmental changes is of great interest for better understanding the nature,…
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Aim: Ecological properties governed by threshold relationships can exhibit heightened sensitivity to climate, creating an inherent source of uncertainty when anticipating future change. We investigated the impact of threshold relationships on our…
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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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Paleoclimate reconstructions are increasingly used to characterize annual climate variability prior to the instrumental record, to improve estimates of climate extremes, and to provide a baseline for climate change projections. To date, paleoclimate…
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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 frequency is changing globally and is projected to affect the global carbon cycle and climate. However, uncertainty about how ecosystems respond to decadal changes in fire frequency makes it difficult to predict the effects of altered fire…
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The retrospective study of abrupt and sustained increases in the radial growth of trees (hereinafter ‘releases’)b y tree-ring analysis is an approach widely used for reconstructing past forest disturbances. Despite the range of dendrochronological…
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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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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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