Research Database
Displaying 1 - 20 of 36
Drivers and Impacts of the Record-Breaking2023 Wildfire Season in Canada
Year: 2024
The 2023 wildfire season in Canada was unprecedented in its scale andintensity, spanning from mid-April to late October and across much of theforested regions of Canada. Here, we summarize the main causes and impactsof this exceptional season. The record-breaking total area burned (~15 Mha)can be attributed to several environmental factors that converged early in theseason: early snowmelt, multiannual drought conditions in western Canada,and the rapid transition to drought in eastern Canada. Anthropogenic climatechange enabled sustained extreme fire weather conditions, as the meanMay–October…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Biogeographic patterns of daily wildfire spread and extremes across North America
Year: 2024
Introduction: Climate change is predicted to increase the frequency of extreme single-day fire spread events, with major ecological and social implications. In contrast with well-documented spatio-temporal patterns of wildfire ignitions and perimeters, daily progression remains poorly understood across continental spatial scales, particularly for extreme single-day events (“blow ups”). Here, we characterize daily wildfire spread across North America, including occurrence of extreme single-day events, duration and seasonality of fire and extremes, and ecoregional climatic…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Indigenous pyrodiversity promotes plant diversity
Year: 2024
Pyrodiversity (temporally and spatially diverse fire histories) is thought to promote biodiversity by increasing environmental heterogeneity and replicating Indigenous fire regimes, yet studies of pyrodiversity-biodiversity relationships from areas under active Indigenous fire stewardship are rare. Here, we explored whether Indigenous pyrodiversity promoted plant richness and diversity in an arid ecosystem from north-western Australia. We selected landscapes that ranged from highly pyrodiverse and under active Indigenous burning to more coarse-scale and less diverse mosaics under lightning…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire-driven animal evolution in the Pyrocene
Year: 2023
Fire regimes are a major agent of evolution in terrestrial animals. Changing fire regimes and the capacity for rapid evolution in wild animal populations suggests the potential for rapid, fire-driven adaptive animal evolution in the Pyrocene. Fire drives multiple modes of evolutionary change, including stabilizing, directional, disruptive, and fluctuating selection, and can strongly influence gene flow and genetic drift. Ongoing and future research in fire-driven animal evolution will benefit from further development of generalizable hypotheses, studies conducted in highly responsive taxa,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Contrasting effects of urbanization and fire on understory plant communities in the natural and wildland–urban interface
Year: 2023
As human populations expand and land-use change intensifies, terrestrial ecosystems experience concurrent disturbances (e.g., urbanization and fire) that may interact and compound their effects on biodiversity. In the urbanizing landscapes of the southern Appalachian region of the United States of America (US), fires in mesic forests have become more frequent in recent years. However, 80 years of forest management practices aimed at fire suppression in this region may have decreased landscape resistance or resilience to high-severity fires. At the same time, housing development is rapidly…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Acorn woodpecker movements and social networks change with wildfire smoke
Year: 2023
Climate change has contributed to increased wildfires. Wildfire smoke exposes wildlife to hazards and mortality from particulate matter on a scale larger than the area impacted by fire. Using automated radiotelemetry, we illustrate how smoky conditions are associated with changes in behavior of acorn woodpeckers (Melanerpes formicivorus), a…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The eco-evolutionary role of fire in shaping terrestrial ecosystems
Year: 2023
1. Fire is an inherently evolutionary process, even though much more emphasis has been given to ecological responses of plants and their associated communities to fire. 2. Here, we synthesize contributions to a Special Feature entitled ‘Fire as a dynamic ecological and evolutionary force’ and place them in a broader context of fire research. Topics covered in this Special Feature include a perspective on the im-pacts of novel fire regimes on differential forest mortality, discussions on new ap-proaches to investigate vegetation-fire feedbacks and resulting plant syndromes,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Making choices: prioritising the protection of biodiversity in wildfires
Year: 2023
Biodiversity is in chronic decline, and extreme events – such as wildfires – can add further episodes of acute losses. Fires of increasing magnitude will often overwhelm response capacity, and decision-makers need to make choices about what to protect. Conventionally, such choices prioritise human life then infrastructure then biodiversity. Based on shortcomings revealed in the 2019–20 Australian wildfires, we propose a series of linked steps that can be used to identify and prioritise biodiversity assets (including their priority relative to other types of assets), enhance and implement…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Lizards' response to the sound of fire is modified by fire history
Year: 2023
Highlights • Lizards surviving wildfires are more alert to fire sound than those in unburned areas. • Lizards living in urban areas reacted to fire sound similarly to wildfire survivors. • Both natural and human-driven disturbances can shape the behaviour of animals. • Fires are likely to be an important selective pressure on animal behaviour. Many animals survive wildfires; however, the mechanisms used to detect and respond to fire have been poorly studied. Sensory cues like sight and sound are used to recognize threats (e.g. predators) and elicit escape responses in prey. Similarly, these…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A firebreak placement model for optimizing biodiversity protection at landscape scale
Year: 2023
A solution approach is proposed to optimize the selection of landscape cells for inclusion in firebreaks. It involves linking spatially explicit information on a landscape’s ecological values, historical ignition patterns and fire spread behavior. A firebreak placement optimization model is formulated that captures the tradeoff between the direct loss of biodiversity due to the elimination of vegetation in areas designated for placement of firebreaks and the protection provided by the firebreaks from losses due to future forest fires. The optimal solution generated by the model reduced…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Incorporating place-based values into ecological restoration
Year: 2022
Knowledge of how ecocultural landscapes co-evolved, how they were shaped and maintained by local people, and what processes disturbed the landscape should inform the planning, execution, and significance of restoration projects. Indigenous stewardship has resulted in legacies of diverse and productive ecocultural environments. Often, this stewardship has been guided by place-based values, which are informed by Indigenous knowledge, beliefs of equal respect for all ecosystem components, and conduct that sustains resource productivity. We propose that cultivating place-based values in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A Survey onMonitoring ofWild Animals during Fires Using Drones
Year: 2022
Forest fires occur for natural and anthropogenic reasons and affect the distribution, structure, and functioning of terrestrial ecosystems worldwide. Monitoring fires and their impacts on ecosystems is an essential prerequisite for effectively managing this widespread environmental problem. With the development of information technologies, unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) are becoming increasingly important in remote monitoring the environment. One of the main applications of drone technology related to nature monitoring is the observation of wild animals. Unmanned aerial vehicles are…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfires as an ecosystem service
Year: 2019
Wildfires are often perceived as destructive disturbances, but we propose that when integrating evolutionary and socioecological factors, fires in most ecosystems can be understood as natural processes that provide a variety of benefits to humankind. Wildfires generate open habitats that enable the evolution of a diversity of shade‐intolerant plants and animals that have long benefited humans. There are many provisioning, regulating, and cultural services that people obtain from wildfires, and prescribed fires and wildfire management are tools for mimicking the ancestral role of wildfires in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wild bee diversity increases with local fire severity in a fire‐prone landscape
Year: 2019
As wildfire activity increases in many regions of the world, it is imperative that we understand how key components of fire‐prone ecosystems respond to spatial variation in fire characteristics. Pollinators provide a foundation for ecological communities by assisting in the reproduction of native plants, yet our understanding of how pollinators such as wild bees respond to variation in fire severity is limited, particularly for forest ecosystems. Here, we took advantage of a natural experiment created by a large‐scale, mixed‐severity wildfire to provide the first assessment of how wild bee…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Towards an understanding of the evolutionary role of fire in animals
Year: 2018
Wildfires underpin the dynamics and diversity of many ecosystems worldwide, and plants show a plethora of adaptive traits for persisting recurrent fires. Many fire-prone ecosystems also harbor a rich fauna; however, knowledge about adaptive traits to fire in animals remains poorly explored. We review existing literature and suggest that fire is an important evolutionary driver for animal diversity because (1) many animals are present in fire-prone landscapes and may have structural and phenotypic characters that contribute to adaptation to these open landscapes; and (2) in some cases, animals…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Recent post-wildfire salvage logging benefits local and landscape floral and bee communities
Year: 2018
Understanding the implications of shifts in disturbance regimes for plants and pollinators is essential for successful land management. Wildfires are essential natural disturbances that are important drivers of forest biodiversity, and there is often pressure to respond to wildfire with management like post-wildfire logging (i.e., removal of dead trees for economic value immediately following wildfire). We investigated how local floral and bee density, species richness, and community composition and dispersion were influenced by post-wildfire logging, and how these effects differed between an…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Accommodating mixed-severity fire to restore and maintain ecosystem integrity with a focus on the Sierra Nevada of California, USA
Year: 2017
Existing fire policy encourages the maintenance of ecosystem integrity in fire management, yet this is difficult to implement on lands managed for competing economic, human safety, and air quality concerns. We discuss a fire management approach in the mid-elevations of the Sierra Nevada, California, USA, that may exemplify similar challenges in other fire-adapted regions of the western USA. We also discuss how managing for pyrodiversity through mixed-severity fires can promote ecosystem integrity in Sierran mixed conifer and ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Laws) forests.
Publication Type: Journal Article
Diversity in forest management to reduce wildfire losses: implications for resilience
Year: 2017
This study investigates how federal, state, and private corporate forest owners in a fire-prone landscape of southcentral Oregon manage their forests to reduce wildfire hazard and loss to high-severity wildfire. We evaluate the implications of our findings for concepts of social–ecological resilience. Using interview data, we found a high degree of "response diversity" (variation in forest management decisions and behaviors to reduce wildfire losses) between and within actor groups. This response diversity contributed to heterogeneous forest conditions across the landscape and was driven…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Using fire to promote biodiversity
Year: 2017
Fire profoundly influences people, climate, and ecosystems (1). The impacts of this interaction are likely to grow, with climate models forecasting widespread increases in fire frequency and intensity because of rising global temperatures (2). However, the relationship between fire and biodiversity is complex (3, 4). Many plants and animals require fire for their survival, yet even in fire-prone ecosystems, some species and communities are highly sensitive to fire. Recent studies (2, 3, 5, 6) are helping to define fire regimes that support the conservation of species with different…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Does increased forest protection correspond to higher fire severity in frequent-fire forests of the western United States?
Year: 2016
There is a widespread view among land managers and others that the protected status of many forestlands in the western United States corresponds with higher fire severity levels due to historical restrictions on logging that contribute to greater amounts of biomass and fuel loading in less intensively managed areas, particularly after decades of fire suppression. This view has led to recent proposals—both administrative and legislative—to reduce or eliminate forest protections and increase some forms of logging based on the belief that restrictions on active management have increased fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article