Research Database

Displaying 1 - 6 of 6

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

Showy dragonflies are being driven extinct by warming and wildfire

Year: 2025

Rising temperatures may disrupt reproduction before becoming lethal; thus mating traits could define species vulnerability to warming. Here, using >1,600 estimates of local extinction for 60 dragonfly species, we show that species with mating-associated wing ornamentation experienced more extinctions and lost more habitat under warming and following wildfire burn than non-ornamented species. By contrast, sensitivity was not affected by ecological traits, such as thermal limits, habitat specialization or body size.

Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fish and Wildlife Habitat

habitat, biodiversity

Publication Type: Journal Article

Fire gives avian populations a rapid and enduring boost in protected forests of California

Year: 2025

BackgroundFire can impact ecosystems and species over both short and long timeframes, resulting in pervasive impacts on the structure of avian communities. While recent research has highlighted the strong impact of fire on bird communities in the short term, there remains a need for understanding long-term population processes following fire, particularly in forested landscapes that are burning more frequently than in the past century. We analyzed avian response to fire using point-count data from 1999–2019 within national parks of the Sierra Nevada Inventory & Monitoring Network,…

Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fish and Wildlife Habitat

biodiversity, post-fire, fire severity

Publication Type: Journal Article

A tale of two fire systems: indigenous fire stewardship in British Columbia and California

Year: 2025

BackgroundAn increasing wildfire problem in western North America has created a policy space for Indigenous fire stewardship (IFS) to mitigate wildfire. We compare how British Columbia and California have supported IFS—two jurisdictions with distinct ecosystems but similar histories of colonialism and its socio-ecological consequences. We examine how IFS is incorporated into each jurisdiction’s institutional framework, and the barriers to, and opportunities for implementation.ResultsEach jurisdiction’s approach to recognizing IFS is shaped by different…

Fuels and Fuel Treatments, Social and Community Impacts of Fire

indigenous fire stewardship, human dimensions

Publication Type: Journal Article

Power and planning: a critical discourse analysis of tribal and non-tribal Oregon wildfire protection plans

Year: 2025

BackgroundSince the late 1800s, the US government has largely removed Indigenous fire stewardship practices from the landscape by implementing a top-down fire suppression system that criminalized traditional fire practices and denaturalized the role of fire in forested environments. A century of routine fire suppression produced dense, homogenous forests capable of sustaining high-intensity wildfire that exceeds the suppression capabilities of land management organizations in many regions, spurring federal leaders to modify management approaches. As part of this change,…

Fire History, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction, Social and Community Impacts of Fire

indigenous fire stewardship, collaboration

Publication Type: Journal Article

Governance of Indigenous data in open earth systems science

Year: 2025

In the age of big data and open science, what processes are needed to follow open science protocols while upholding Indigenous Peoples’ rights? The Earth Data Relations Working Group (EDRWG), convened to address this question and envision a research landscape that acknowledges the legacy of extractive practices and embraces new norms across Earth science institutions and open science research. Using the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) as an example, the EDRWG recommends actions, applicable across all phases of the data lifecycle, that recognize the sovereign rights of…

Communicating about Fire, Social and Community Impacts of Fire

remote sensing, indigenous fire stewardship

Publication Type: Journal Article