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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16

Climate change effects on wildfire occurrence have been attributed primarily to increases in temperatures causing earlier snowpack ablation and longer fire seasons. Variability in precipitation is also an important control on snowpack accumulation…
Author(s): Zachary A. Holden, Charles H. Luce, Michael A. Crimmins, Penelope Morgan
Year Published:

Climate change is likely to alter wildfire regimes, but the magnitude and timing of potential climate-driven changes in regional fire regimes are not well understood. We considered how the occurrence, size, and spatial location of large fires might…
Author(s): Anthony L. Westerling, Monica G. Turner, Erica A. H. Smithwick, William H. Romme, Michael G. Ryan
Year Published:

Anticipating future forest-fire regimes under changing climate requires that scientists and natural resource managers understand the factors that control fire across space and time. Fire scars-proxy records of fires, formed in the growth rings of…
Author(s): Donald A. Falk, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Peter M. Brown, Calvin A. Farris, Peter Z. Fule, Donald McKenzie, Thomas W. Swetnam, Alan H. Taylor, Megan L. Van Horne
Year Published:

Plains prickly pear (Opuntia polyacantha Haw.) is common throughout the Great Plains and often becomes detrimental to agricultural production on noncultivated lands. We examined direct fire effects on plains prickly pear and mechanisms of tissue…
Author(s): Lance T. Vermeire, Aaron D. Roth
Year Published:

Humans and their ancestors are unique in being a fire-making species, but ‘natural’ (i.e. independent of humans) fires have an ancient, geological history on Earth. Natural fires have influenced biological evolution and global biogeochemical cycles…
Author(s): David M. J. S. Bowman
Year Published:

Each year, large areas are burned in wildfires across the Western United States. Assessing the ecological effects of these fires is crucial to effective postfire management. This requires accurate, efficient, and economical methods to assess the…
Author(s): Gregory K. Dillon, Penelope Morgan, Zachary A. Holden
Year Published:

Fire is a keystone process in many ecosystems of western North America. Severe fires kill and consume large amounts of above- and belowground biomass and affect soils, resulting in long-lasting consequences for vegetation, aquatic ecosystem…
Author(s): Gregory K. Dillon, Zachary A. Holden, Penelope Morgan, Michael A. Crimmins, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Charles H. Luce
Year Published:

In the Northern Rockies, forests that have escaped fire are rare. In the Crown, fire is just as important as rainfall and sunlight are to plants and animals. For the vast majority of forest types within the region, the predominant fire regime is one…
Author(s): Richard L. Hutto
Year Published:

Forests characterized by mixed-severity fires occupy a broad moisture gradient between lower elevation forests typified by low-severity fires and higher elevation forests in which high-severity, stand replacing fires are the norm. Mixed-severity…
Author(s): David A. Perry, Paul F. Hessburg, Carl N. Skinner, Thomas A. Spies, Scott L. Stephens, Alan H. Taylor, Jerry F. Franklin, Brenda McComb, Gregg M. Riegel
Year Published:

Climate change is projected to profoundly influence vegetation patterns and community compositions, either directly through increased species mortality and shifts in species distributions or indirectly through disturbance dynamics such as increased…
Author(s): Rachel A. Loehman, Jason A. Clark, Robert E. Keane
Year Published:

This report synthesizes available fire history and climate change scientific knowledge to aid managers with fire decisions in the face of ongoing 21st Century climate change. Fire history and climate change (FHCC) have been ongoing for over 400…
Author(s): William T. Sommers, Stanley G. Coloff, Susan G. Conard
Year Published:

Periodic wildfire defines plant community composition and dynamics in many of the world's semi-arid biomes, whose climates and floras also favor wild bee diversity. Invasive flammable grasses, deforestation, historical fire suppression and…
Author(s): James H. Cane, John L. Neff
Year Published:

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) has been declining across much of its range in North America because of the combined effects of mountain pine beetle epidemics, fire exclusion policies, and widespread exotic blister rust infections. Whitebark pine…
Author(s): Robert E. Keane
Year Published:

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis) is a threatened keystone species in subalpine zones of Western North America that plays a role in watershed dynamics and maintenance of high elevation biodiversity (Schwandt, 2006). Whitebark pine has experienced…
Author(s): Paul E. Trusty, Cathy L. Cripps
Year Published:

The generalist fungal pathogen Pyrenophora semeniperda occurs primarily in cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum) seed banks, where it causes high mortality. We investigated the relationship between this pathogen and its cheatgrass host in the context of fire…
Author(s): Julie Beckstead, Laura E. Street, Susan E. Meyer, Phil S. Allen
Year Published:

Wildfires often produce large increases in runoff and erosion rates (e.g., Moody and Martin, 2009), and land managers need to predict the frequency and magnitude of postfire erosion to determine the needs for hazard response and possible erosion…
Author(s): Joseph W. Wagenbrenner, Peter R. Robichaud
Year Published: