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Research Database

Displaying 21 - 40 of 161

A horizon scan to inform research priorities on post-wildfire forest restoration and recovery in the western United States

Year: 2025
The frequency, severity, and scale of extreme wildfire events is increasing globally, with certain regions such as the western United States disproportionately impacted. As attention shifts toward understanding how to adapt to and recover from extreme wildfire, there is a need to prioritize where additional research and evidence are needed to inform decision-making. In this paper, we use a horizon-scanning approach to identify key topics that could guide post-wildfire forest restoration and recovery efforts in the western United States over the next few decades. Horizon scanning is a method…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction, Social and Community Impacts of Fire
post-fire, adaptation, extreme wildfire event
Publication Type: Journal Article

Finding floral and faunal species richness optima among active fire regimes

Year: 2025
Changing fire regimes have important implications for biodiversity and challenge traditional conservation approaches that rely on historical conditions as proxies for ecological integrity. This historical-centric approach becomes increasingly tenuous under climate change, necessitating direct tests of environmental impacts on biodiversity. At the same time, widespread departures from historical fire regimes have limited the ability to sample diverse fire histories. We examined 2 areas in California's Sierra Nevada (USA) with active fire regimes to study the responses of bird, plant, and bat…
Fire History, Fish and Wildlife Habitat
fire regimes, biodiversity, fire severity, wildlife
Publication Type: Journal Article

A cellular necrosis process model for estimating conifer crown scorch

Year: 2025
Fire-caused tree mortality has major impacts on forest ecosystems. One primary cause of post-fire tree mortality in non-resprouting species is crown scorch, the percentage of foliage in a crown that is killed by heat. Despite its importance, the heat required to kill foliage is not well-understood. We used the “lag” model to describe time- and temperature-dependent leaf cell necrosis as a method of predicting leaf scorch. The lag model includes two rate parameters that describe 1) the process of cells accumulating non-lethal damage, and 2) damage becoming lethal to the cell. To parameterize…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Mixed-Conifer Management
tree mortality, post-fire, modeling
Publication Type: Journal Article

Extreme Colorado 2020 fires: remotely sensed burn severity influenced by treatments, forest types, and days of burning

Year: 2025
Forest managers are faced with escalating size, severity, and cost of wildfires. To mitigate this, U.S. federal land management agencies are increasing forest treatments such as mechanical thinning and prescribed fire. While there is a growing body of work on treatment–wildfire interactions, treatment impacts in increasingly extreme wildfire situations remain unknown. Here we examined how treatments and previous wildfires influenced remotely sensed burn severity across four 2020 wildfires in Colorado that burned over 238 000 ha, 10 000 ha of which were treated or experienced…
Fuels and Fuel Treatments
post-fire, fuel treatment effectiveness
Publication Type: Journal Article

Fire severity drives understory community dynamics and the recovery of culturally significant plants

Year: 2024
Anthropogenic influences are altering fire regimes worldwide, resulting in an increase in the size and severity of wildfires. Simultaneously, throughout western North America, there is increasing recognition of the important role of Indigenous fire stewardship in shaping historical fire regimes and fire-adapted ecosystems. However, there is limited understanding of how ecosystems are affected by or recover from contemporary “megafires,” particularly in terms of understory plant communities that are critical to both biodiversity and Indigenous cultures. To address this gap, our collaborative…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
fire severity, forest understory, post-fire
Publication Type: Journal Article

Prescribed fire increases forage mineral content in grazed rangeland

Year: 2024
BackgroundSustainable rangeland management balances production and conservation. While a broad literature describes the conservation benefits of prescribed fire, benefits for livestock production have emerged more slowly. Mineral nutrition is important for livestock health and performance, but the impact of prescribed fire on mineral concentration of forages, especially in the northern US Great Plains, remains unknown.AimsWe investigated how burning affects the mineral concentration of forage early and late in the growing season.MethodsData…
Fire and Rangelands, Prescribed Burning
post-fire
Publication Type: Journal Article

Montane springs provide regeneration refugia after high-severity wildfire

Year: 2024
In the mountainous regions of the Western United States, increasing wildfire activity and climate change are putting forests at risk of regeneration failure and conversion to non-forests. During periods with unfavorable climatic conditions, locations that are suitable for post-fire tree regeneration (regeneration refugia) may be essential for forest recovery. These refugia could provide scattered islands of recovering forest from which broader forest recovery may be facilitated. Spring ecosystems provide cool and wet microsites relative to the surrounding landscape and may act as regeneration…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Mixed-Conifer Management
regeneration, disturbance, post-fire, fire severity
Publication Type: Journal Article

Changing fire regimes and nuanced impacts on a critically imperiled species

Year: 2024
Wildfire activity throughout western North America is increasing which can have important consequences for species persistence. Native species have evolved disturbance-adapted traits that confer resilience to natural disturbance provided disturbances operate within their historical range of variability. This resilience can erode as disturbance regimes change and begin operating outside this range. We assessed wildfire impacts during 1987–2018 on the northern spotted owl, an imperiled species with complex relationships with late and early seral forest in the Pacific Northwest, USA. We analyzed…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fire History, Fish and Wildlife Habitat
wildlife, fire regimes
Publication Type: Journal Article

Climate limits vegetation green-up more than slope, soil erodibility, and immediate precipitation following high-severity wildfire

Year: 2024
BackgroundIn the southwestern United States, post-fire vegetation recovery is increasingly variable in forest burned at high severity. Many factors, including temperature, drought, and erosion, can reduce post-fire vegetation recovery rates. Here, we examined how year-of-fire precipitation variability, topography, and soils influenced post-fire vegetation recovery in the southwestern United States as measured by greenness to determine whether erosion-related factors would have persistent effects in the longer post-fire period. We modeled relationships between post-fire vegetation and these…
Climate Change and Fire, Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Soils and Woody Debris
post-fire, fire severity
Publication Type: Journal Article

Parcel-Level Risk Affects Wildfire Outcomes: Insights from Pre-Fire Rapid Assessment Data for Homes Destroyed in 2020 East Troublesome Fire

Year: 2024
Parcel-level risk (PLR) describes how wildfire risk varies from home to home based on characteristics that relate to likely fire behavior, the susceptibility of homes to fire, and the ability of firefighters to safely access properties. Here, we describe the WiRē Rapid Assessment (RA), a parcel-level rapid wildfire risk assessment tool designed to evaluate PLR with a small set of measures for all homes in a community. We investigate the relationship between 2019 WiRē RA data collected in the Columbine Lake community in Grand County, Colorado, and whether assessed homes were destroyed in the…
Communicating about Fire, Risk Assessment and Analysis, Social and Community Impacts of Fire
post-fire, mitigation
Publication Type: Journal Article

Quantifying Aspect-Dependent Snowpack Response to High-Elevation Wildfire in the Southern Rocky Mountains

Year: 2024
Increasing wildfire frequency and severity in high-elevation seasonal snow zones presents a considerable water resource management challenge across the western United States (U.S.). Wildfires can affect snowpack accumulation and melt patterns, altering the quantity and timing of runoff. While prior research has shown that wildfire generally increases snow melt rates and advances snow disappearance dates, uncertainties remain regarding variations across complex terrain and the energy balance between burned and unburned areas. Utilizing paired in situ data sources within the 2020 Cameron Peak…
Climate Change and Fire, Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
post-fire, wildfire and water
Publication Type: Journal Article

Western larch regeneration more sensitive to wildfire-related factors than seasonal climate variability

Year: 2024
To understand the impacts of changing climate and wildfire activity on conifer forests, we studied how wildfire and post-fire seasonal climate conditions influence western larch (Larix occidentalis) regeneration across its range in the northwestern US. We destructively sampled 1651 seedlings from 57 sites across 32 fires that burned at moderate or high severity between 2000 and 2015; sites were within 100 m of reproductively mature western larch. Using dendrochronological methods, we estimated germination years of seedlings to calculate annual recruitment rates. We used boosted…
Climate Change and Fire, Mixed-Conifer Management
post-fire, modeling
Publication Type: Journal Article

Characterizing post-fire delayed tree mortality with remote sensing: sizing up the elephant in the room

Year: 2024
BackgroundDespite recent advances in understanding the drivers of tree-level delayed mortality, we lack a method for mapping delayed mortality at landscape and regional scales. Consequently, the extent, magnitude, and effects of delayed mortality on post-fire landscape patterns of burn severity are unknown. We introduce a remote sensing approach for mapping delayed mortality based on post-fire decline in the normalized burn ratio (NBR). NBR decline is defined as the change in NBR between the first post-fire measurement and the minimum NBR value up to 5 years post-fire for each pixel…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
fire refugia, post-fire, tree mortality
Publication Type: Journal Article

Accelerated forest restoration may benefit spotted owls through landscape complementation

Year: 2024
Animals often rely on the presence of multiple, spatially segregated cover types to satisfy their ecological needs; the juxtaposition of these cover types is called landscape complementation. In ecosystems that have been homogenized because of human land use, such as fire-suppressed forests, management activities have the potential to increase the heterogeneity of cover types and, therefore, landscape complementation. We modeled changes to California spotted owl (Strix occidentalis occidentalis) nesting/roosting habitat, foraging habitat and habitat co-occurrence (i.e. landscape…
Fish and Wildlife Habitat, Fuels and Fuel Treatments, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
wildlife, forest structure
Publication Type: Journal Article

Centering socioecological connections to collaboratively manage post- fire vegetation shifts

Year: 2024
Climate  change  is  altering  fire  regimes  and  post-fire  conditions,  contributing  to  relatively  rapid  transformation  of  landscapes  across  the  western  US.  Studies  are  increasingly  documenting  post-fire  vegetation  transitions,  particularly  from  forest  to  non-  forest conditions or from sagebrush to invasive annual grasses. The prevalence of climate-driven, post-fire vegetation transitions is likely to increase…
Climate Change and Fire, Fire Effects and Fire Ecology
post-fire, management
Publication Type: Journal Article

Moderating effects of past wildfire on reburn severity depend on climate and initial severity in Western US forests

Year: 2024
Rising global fire activity is increasing the prevalence of repeated short-interval burning (reburning) in forests worldwide. In forests that historically experienced frequent-fire regimes, high-severity fire exacerbates the severity of subsequent fires by increasing prevalence of shrubs and/or by creating drier understory conditions. Low- to moderate-severity fire, in contrast, can moderate future fire behavior by reducing fuel loads. The extent to which previous fires moderate future fire severity will powerfully affect fire-prone forest ecosystem trajectories over the next century. Further…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fire History, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
fire severity, post-fire, weather
Publication Type: Journal Article

When do contemporary wildfires restore forest structures in the Sierra Nevada?

Year: 2024
Background: Following a century of fire suppression in western North America, managers use forest restoration treatments to reduce fuel loads and reintroduce key processes like fire. However, annual area burned by wildfire frequently outpaces the application of restoration treatments. As this trend continues under climate change, it is essential that we understand the effects of contemporary wildfires on forest ecosystems and the extent to which post-fire structures are meeting common forest restoration objectives. In this study, we used airborne lidar to evaluate fire effects across yellow…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
fire severity, post-fire
Publication Type: Journal Article

A fast spectral recovery does not necessarily indicate post-fire forest recovery

Year: 2024
BackgroundClimate change has increased wildfire activity in the western USA and limited the capacity for forests to recover post-fire, especially in areas burned at high severity. Land managers urgently need a better understanding of the spatiotemporal variability in natural post-fire forest recovery to plan and implement active recovery projects. In burned areas, post-fire “spectral recovery”, determined by examining the trajectory of multispectral indices (e.g., normalized burn ratio) over time, generally corresponds with recovery of multiple post-fire vegetation types, including trees and…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
post-fire, modeling, remote sensing
Publication Type: Journal Article

Fuel constraints, not fire weather conditions, limit fire behavior in reburned boreal forests

Year: 2024
Fire frequency in boreal forests has increased via longer burning seasons, drier conditions, and higher temperatures. However, fires have historically self-regulated via fuel limitations, mediating the effects of changes in climate and fire weather. Early post-fire boreal forests (10–15 years postfire) are often dominated by mixed conifer-broadleaf or broadleaf regeneration, considered less flammable due to the higher foliar moisture of broadleaf trees and shrubs compared to their more intact conifer counterparts. However, the strength of self-regulation in the context of changing fire…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fire History, Fuels and Fuel Treatments
regeneration, post-fire, fire behavior
Publication Type: Journal Article

Hazardous wildfire smoke events can alter dawn soundscapes in dry forests of central and eastern Washington, United States

Year: 2024
As global wildfire activity increases, wildlife are facing greater exposure to hazardous smoke pollution – with unknown consequences for biodiversity. Research on the effects of smoke on wild animals is extremely limited, in part due to the inherent logistical challenges of observing how animals respond to smoke in real time. Passive acoustic monitoring may be a powerful tool to safely and effectively monitor biodiversity before, during, and after major smoke events. In this study, we used data…
Fish and Wildlife Habitat, Smoke and Air Quality
wildlife
Publication Type: Journal Article