There is considerable interest in evaluating whether recent wildfires in dry conifer forests of western North America are burning with uncharacteristic severity—that is, with a severity outside the historical range of variability.
Wildfire has been an important process affecting the Earth's surface and atmosphere for over 350 million years and human societies have coexisted with fire since their emergence. Yet many consider wildfire as an accelerating problem, with widely held perceptions both in the media and scientific papers of increasing fire occurrence, severity and resulting losses.
Dynamics of dead wood, a key component of forest structure, are not well described for mixed- severity fi re regimes with widely varying fi re intervals.
Throughout the Sierra Nevada, nearly a century of fire suppression has altered the tree species composition, forest structure, and fire regimes that were previously characteristic of montane forests.
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.
Timber is frequently salvage-logged following high-severity stand-replacing wildfire, but the practice is controversial. One concern is that compound disturbances could result in more deleterious impacts than either disturbance individually, with mechanical operations having the potential to set back recovering native species and increase invasion by non-native species.
The Ecological Importance of High-Severity Fires, presents information on the current paradigm shift in the way people think about wildfire and ecosystems.
Fire severity refers to the effects of a fire on the environment, typically focusing on the loss of vegetation both above ground and below ground but also including soil impacts. Fire Facts: What is? Fire Severity
As the size and extent of wildfires has increased in recent decades, so has the cost and extent of post-fire management, including seeding and salvage logging. However, we know little about how burn severity, salvage logging, and post-fire seeding interact to influence vegetation recovery long-term.
Recent large and severe outbreaks of native bark beetles have raised concern among the general public and land managers about potential for amplified fire activity in western North America. To date, the majority of studies examining bark beetle outbreaks and subsequent fire severity in the U.S.