Research Database
Displaying 1 - 20 of 280
The national Fire and Fire Surrogate study: Effects of fuel treatments in the Western and Eastern United States after 20 years
Year: 2025
The national Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study was initiated more than two decades ago with the goal of evaluating the ecological impacts of mechanical treatments and prescribed fire in different ecosystems across the United States. Since then, 4 of the original 12 sites remain active in managing and monitoring the original FFS study which provides a unique opportunity to look at the long-term effects of these treatments in different regions. These sites include California (Blodgett Forest Research Station), Montana (Lubrecht Experimental Forest), North Carolina (Green River Game Land), and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mechanical mastication and prescribed burning reduce forest fuels and alter stand structure in dry coniferous forests
Year: 2025
Mechanical thinning is often prescribed in dry coniferous forests to reduce stand density, ladder fuels, and canopy fuels before using prescribed burning to manage surface fuels. Mechanical mastication is a tool for thinning forests where commercial thinning is not viable. We evaluated the effects of mastication-based thinning – with and without subsequent prescribed burning – on forest structure and fuels in dry coniferous forests of the Pacific Northwest, USA. We thinned stands by masticating small-diameter trees and depositing the resulting slash on the forest floor. We then used…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Modeling the probability of bark beetle-caused tree mortality as a function of watershed-scale host species presence and basal area
Year: 2025
In recent decades, bark beetle outbreaks have caused mass tree mortality in western US forests, which has led to altered wildfire characteristics, hydrological processes, and forest carbon dynamics. Understanding spatial variability in forest susceptibility to bark beetle outbreaks in the western US could inform strategic forest management to reduce wildfire risk, manage forest carbon, and plan for altered hydrology. The susceptibility of a forest stand to mortality by bark beetles depends on the availability and characteristics of trees of the host tree species. For multiple bark beetle…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Role of Forensic Anthropology in the Search and Recovery of Fatal Wildland Fire Victims
Year: 2025
The search and recovery process of fatal fire victims is one of the greatest challenges in forensic anthropology, especially in large-scale wildland fire disasters. Burned human remains can exhibit significant variation in their degree of preservation depending on the temperature of the fire, the length of exposure to the heat source, and intrinsic characteristics of the victim (e.g., body size, age, and bone density). Wildland fire victims typically exhibit characteristics of the final stages of burning (i.e., nearly complete to complete calcination). The search for burned human remains is…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Trailing edge contractions common in interior western US trees under varying disturbances
Year: 2025
As climate warms, trees are expected to track their ideal climate, referred to as ‘range shifts’; however, lags in tree range shifts are currently common. Disturbance events that kill trees may help catalyse tree migrations by removing biotic competition, but can also limit regeneration by eliminating seed sources, and it is unknown whether disturbance will facilitate or inhibit tree migrations in the face of climate change. Here we use national forest inventory data to show that seedlings of 15 dominant tree species in the interior western United States occupy historically cooler areas than…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Postfire recovery trajectories of bulldozed versus burned chaparral eight years postfire
Year: 2025
BackgroundWe examined vegetation diversity, structure, and composition on and off fuel breaks established during a 2013 wildfire in California chaparral shrublands. Vegetation was sampled 8 years following the fire to identify any persistent changes in structure or composition caused by this fire management activity, with implications for postfire vegetation recovery.ResultsWhile species diversity and cover of lifeforms did not differ on and off fuel breaks, species composition and regeneration strategy of dominant shrubs differed significantly. Sites in fuel…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Post-fire delayed tree mortality in mesic coniferous forests reduces fire refugia and seed sources
Year: 2025
Context: Ecological functions provided by fire refugia are critical for supporting conifer forest resiliency under increased fire activity across the western United States. The spatial distribution and persistence of fire refugia over time are uncertain as fire-injured trees continue to die over subsequent years post-fire.Objectives: We examined how post-fire delayed tree mortality affects the spatial distribution and attributes of fire refugia at patch and landscape scales following high-severity wildfires.Methods: To explore changes in fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Burning from the ground up: the structure and impact of Prescribed Burn Associations in the United States
Year: 2025
Background: To combat losses and threats from fire exclusion and extreme wildfire events, communities in the United States are increasingly self-organizing through locally led Prescribed Burn Associations (PBAs) to plan and implement prescribed burns on private lands.Aim: Our study aimed to document the expansion of PBAs and provide insight into their structure, function, and impacts.Methods: Leaders from 135 known PBAs across the United States were invited to participate in an online survey.Key results: Survey results demonstrate a widespread emergence of PBAs in the United States,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Equity in resilience: a case study of community resilience to wildfire in southwestern Oregon, United States
Year: 2025
In the fire-prone and fire-adapted landscape of the Rogue River Basin of southwestern Oregon, communities mobilize to prepare, respond, and recover from wildfire while modifying the current social and ecological system. Marginalized communities are often most affected and least prepared for disturbances of this kind, where racism, colonialism, and structural equities prevent meaningful inclusion and equitable allocation of resources. This research centers these voices in an empirical study of the situated resilience of the Rogue River Basin, rooted in the work of community-based organizations…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Unpacking the pluralism paradox: collaborative governance outcomes in jurisdictionally complex environments
Year: 2025
Background: In collaborative governance, many of the factors that give rise to the need for collaboration are also identified by scholars as undermining its effectiveness. Complex task environments mean that multiple and varied interests are necessary to address problems, but this inherent pluralism may also increase conflict. This suggests a pluralism paradox.Aims: Our article advances theory and provides evidence about pluralism associated with jurisdictional affiliation and their relationship to collaborative governance outcomes during wildfires.Methods: We analyzed data…
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…
Publication Type: Journal Article
COVID‐19 Fueled an Elevated Number of Human‐Caused Ignitions in the Western United States During the 2020 Wildfire Season
Year: 2025
The area burned in the western United States during the 2020 fire season was the greatest in the modern era. Here we show that the number of human-caused fires in 2020 also was elevated, nearly 20% higher than the 1992–2019 average. Although anomalously dry conditions enabled ignitions to spread and contributed to record area burned, these conditions alone do not explain the surge in the number of human-caused ignitions. We argue that behavioral shifts aimed at curtailing the spread of COVID-19 altered human-environment interactions to favor increased ignitions. For example, the number of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Containment lines, PODs and suppression success: a case study of the 2021 Schneider Springs Fire
Year: 2025
BackgroundWildfire suppression is shaped by a complex interplay of environmental conditions, resource allocation and management strategies.AimsExamining the containment of the 2021 Schneider Springs Fire in the Eastern Cascades of Washington State, USA, we emphasise critical roles of variable selection, representative sampling and suppression-specific factors.MethodsUsing descriptive, predictive and causal models, we assessed the influence of weather conditions, terrain features, personnel availability, tree canopy cover, fire containment…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Collapse and restoration of mature forest habitat in California
Year: 2025
Mature and old-growth forests provide critically important ecosystems services and wildlife habitats, but they are being lost at a rapid rate to uncharacteristic mega-disturbances. We developed a simulation system to project time-to-extinction for mature and old-growth forest habitat in the Sierra Nevada, California, USA. The simulation parameters were derived from a 1985–2022 empirical time-series of habitat for the southern Sierra Nevada fisher (Pekania pennanti), an endangered native mammal and old-forest obligate that has seen a 50 % decline in its habitat over the past…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Assessing costs and constraints of forest residue disposal by pile burning
Year: 2025
Pile burning of thinned residues is a critical tool to dispose of fuels and to reduce wildfire risk in overstocked, fire-prone forests globally. However, cost estimates of pile burning are limited. In the Western United States, where fuel reduction and pile burning are key strategies to mitigate risk of severe wildfire, previous reports estimate that the average cost of pile burning after machine treatment is $543 ac−1 ($1,343 ha−1). There is, however, limited information on the costs of hand thinning and pile burning. In response, this study quantified the costs of cutting and yarding,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Perspectives: Six opportunities to improve understanding of fuel treatment longevity in historically frequent-fire forests
Year: 2025
Fuel-reduction and restoration treatments (“treatments”) are conducted extensively in dry and historically frequent-fire forests of interior western North America (“dry forests”) to reduce potential for uncharacteristically severe wildfire. However, limited understanding of treatment longevity and long-term treatment effects creates potential for inefficient treatment maintenance and inaccurate forecasting of wildfire behavior. In this perspectives paper, we briefly summarize current understanding of long-term effects of three common treatment types (burn-only, thin-only, and thin-plus-burn)…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Temporal and spatial pattern analysis of escaped prescribed fires in California from 1991 to 2020
Year: 2025
Background: Prescribed fires play a critical role in reducing the intensity and severity of future wildfires by systematically and widely consuming accumulated vegetation fuel. While the current probability of prescribed fire escape in the United States stands very low, their consequential impact, particularly the large wildfires they cause, raises substantial concerns. The most direct way of understanding this trade-off between wildfire risk reduction and prescribed fire escapes is to explore patterns in the historical prescribed fire records. This study investigates the spatiotemporal…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Rapid Declines in Southern Sierra Nevada Fisher Habitat Driven by Drought and Wildfire
Year: 2025
Aim: Forest disturbances are a natural ecological process, but climate and land-use change are altering disturbance regimes at an unprecedented rate, posing significant threats to biological communities and the species of concern. Our aim was to develop an automated habitat monitoring system for the Southern Sierra Nevada Distinct Population Segment of fisher (Pekania pennanti) in California, USA, to investigate long-term habitat trends and the effects of a recent megadrought and numerous megafires on fisher habitat.Location: Southern Sierra Nevada, California, USA.Methods: We used…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Integrated fire management as an adaptation and mitigation strategy to altered fire regimes
Year: 2025
Altered fire regimes are a global challenge, increasingly exacerbated by climate change, which modifies fire weather and prolongs fire seasons. These changing conditions heighten the vulnerability of ecosystems and human populations to the impacts of wildfires on the environment, society, and the economy. The rapid pace of these changes exposes significant gaps in knowledge, tools, technology, and governance structures needed to adopt informed, holistic approaches to fire management that address both current and future challenges. Integrated Fire Management is an approach that combines fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
When the wilderness burns: an analysis of current fire management and the case for prescribed fire in designated wilderness in the United States
Year: 2025
BackgroundUnited States wilderness areas face increasing challenges from altered fire regimes and climate change, and land managers face ever more complex decisions about fire use. While federal policies permit various fire management strategies in wilderness, including prescribed fire, managers predominantly rely on suppression despite broad support to restore and sustain fire's natural role in these landscapes. Consequently, wilderness fire regimes continue to diverge from historical norms. To better understand wilderness fire management, we used surveys and interviews with…
Publication Type: Journal Article