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Displaying 1 - 20 of 76

Stand-replacing fires burned at 100 to 300-year intervals for millennia in subalpine conifer forests of western North America, but forests are burning more frequently as climate warms. Postfire tree regeneration is reduced when young forests reburn…
Author(s): Tyler J. Hoecker, Winslow D. Hansen, Monica G. Turner
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:

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:

Restoration and rehabilitation treatments that manipulate vegetation can be expensive to implement but are infrequently evaluated to determine whether spending more improves intended outcomes. We assessed commonly implemented vegetation treatments…
Author(s): Seth Munson, Ethan O. Yackulic, Lucas S. Bair, Stella M. Copeland, Kevin L. Gunnell
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:

Determining the age of natural conifer regeneration following wildfires is crucial to understanding ecological trajectories and predicting post-fire effects in conifer forests. However, traditional methods of determining seedling age via growth ring…
Author(s): Eva K. Strand, Darcy H. Hammond
Year Published:

The extent of severely burned landscapes are increasing in the Western US due to climate change and altered forest states. Directly after a wildfire, managers implement techniques to stabilize soils or harvest merchantable timber. Collaborating with…
Author(s): Henry S. Grover, Matthew A. Bowker
Year Published:

Prescribed fire is a vital tool for mitigating wildfire hazard and restoring ecosystems in many western North American forest types. However, there can be considerable variability in fuel consumption from prescribed burns, which affects both hazard…
Author(s): Jacob I. Levine, Brandon M. Collins, Robert A. York, Daniel E. Foster, Danny L. Fry, Scott L. Stephens
Year Published:

We integrated a widely used forest growth and management model, the Forest Vegetation Simulator, with the FSim large wildfire simulator to study how management policies affected future wildfire over 50 years on a 1.3 million ha study area comprised…
Author(s): Alan A. Ager, Ana M. G. Barros, Rachel M. Houtman, Robert C. Seli, Michelle A. Day
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:

Wildfires change plant community structure and impact wildlife habitat and population dynamics. Recent wildfire‐induced losses of big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ) in North American shrublands are outpacing natural recovery and leading to…
Author(s): David A. Pyke, Robert K. Shriver, Robert S. Arkle, David S. Pilliod, Cameron L. Aldridge, Peter S. Coates, Matthew J. Germino, Julie A. Heinrichs, Mark A. Ricca, Scott E. Shaff
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:

Grasslands occur on all of the continents. They collectively constitute the largest ecosystem in the world, making up 40.5% of the terrestrial land area, excluding Greenland and Antarctica. Grasslands are not entirely natural because they have…
Author(s): Daniel G. Neary, Jackson M. Leonard
Year Published:

Restoration of non-sprouting shrubs after wildfire is increasingly becoming a management priority. In the western U.S., Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. wyomingensis Beetle & Young) restoration is a high priority, but…
Author(s): Kirk W. Davies, Jonathan D. Bates, Chad S. Boyd
Year Published:

Several recent studies have documented how fire severity affects the density and spatial patterns of tree regeneration in western North American ponderosa pine forests. However, less is known about the effects of fire severity on fine-scale tree…
Author(s): Suzanne M. Owen, Carolyn Hull Sieg, Peter Z. Fule, Catherine A. Gehring, L. Scott Baggett, Jose M. Iniguez, Paula J. Fornwalt, Michael A. Battaglia
Year Published:

Background: Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana, USA) have been immense in recent years, capturing the attention of resource managers, fire scientists, and the general public. This paper synthesizes…
Author(s): Jessica E. Halofsky, David L. Peterson, Brian J. Harvey
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:

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:

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:

In the face of changing climatic regimes and increases in extreme fire events, many western forests are poised to burn, not only once but multiple times, sometimes in short succession. As such, land managers have limited opportunities to effectively…
Author(s): Michelle Coppoletta, Brandon M. Collins, Scott H. Markwith, Kyle E. Merriam
Year Published: