Research Database

Displaying 1 - 3 of 3

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

Small-scale fire refugia increase soil bacterial and fungal richness and increase community cohesion nine years after fire

Year: 2025

Small-scale variation in wildfire behavior may cause large differences in belowground bacterial and fungal communities with consequences for belowground microbial diversity, community assembly, and function. Here we combine pre-fire, active-fire, and post-wildfire measurements in a mixed-conifer forest to identify how fine-scale wildfire behavior, unburned refugia, and aboveground forest structure are associated with belowground bacterial and fungal communities nine years after wildfire. We used fine-scale mapping of small (0.9–172.6 m2) refugia to sample soil-associated burned and…

Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Soils and Woody Debris

post-fire, forest structure, fire refugia, disturbance

Publication Type: Journal Article

Mapping Delayed Canopy Loss and Durable Fire Refugia for the 2020 Wildfires in Washington State Using Multiple Sensors

Year: 2025

Fire refugia are unburned and low severity patches within wildfires that contribute heterogeneity that is important to retaining biodiversity and regenerating forest following fire. With increasingly intense and frequent wildfires in the Pacific Northwest, fire refugia are important for re-establishing populations sensitive to fire and maintaining resilience to future disturbances. Mapping fire refugia and delayed canopy loss is useful for understanding patterns in their distribution. The increasing abundance of satellite data and advanced analysis platforms offer the potential to map fire…

Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction

tree mortality, post-fire, fire refugia, remote sensing

Publication Type: Journal Article