In arid and semi-arid landscapes around the world, wildfire plays a key role in maintaining species diversity. Dominant plant associations may depend upon particular fire regime characteristics for their persistence.
White ash results from the complete combustion of surface fuels, making it a logically simple retrospective indicator of surface fuel consumption. However, the strength of this relationship has been neither tested nor adequately demonstrated with field measurements.
Woodland ecosystems of the world have been changed by land use demands, altered fire regimes, invasive species and climate change. Reduced fire frequency is recognised as a main causative agent for Pinus–Juniperus L. (piñon–juniper) expansion in North American woodlands.
Increasing fire frequencies and uncharacteristic severe fires have created a need for improved restoration methods across rangelands in western North America. Traditional restoration seed mixtures of native perennial mid- to late-seral plant species may not be suitable for intensely burned sites that have been returned to an early-seral condition.
Climate change is expected to increase disturbances such as stand-replacing wildfire in many ecosystems, which have the potential to drive rapid turnover in ecological communities. Ecosystem recovery, and therefore maintenance of critical structures and functions (resilience), is likely to vary across environmental gradients such as moisture availability, but has received little study.
Mitigation of ecological damage caused by rangeland wildfires has historically been an issue restricted to the western United States. It has focused on conservation of ecosystem function through reducing soil erosion and spread of invasive plants. Effectiveness of mitigation treatments has been debated recently.
Pervasive warming can lead to chronic stress on forest trees, which may contribute to mortality resulting from fire-caused injuries. Longitudinal analyses of forest plots from across the western US show that high pre-fire climatic water deficit was related to increased post-fire tree mortality probabilities.
The Fourmile Canyon Fire burned in the fall of 2010 in the Rocky Mountain Front Range adjacent to Boulder, Colorado. The fire occurred in steep, rugged terrain, primarily on privately owned mixed ponderosa pine and Douglas-fir forests.
Understanding effects of changes in ecological disturbance regimes on soil properties, and capacity of soil properties to resist disturbance, is important for assessing ecological condition.
Wildfire effects upon riparian plant community structure, composition, and distribution may strongly influence the dynamic relationships between riparian vegetation and stream ecosystems. However, few studies have examined the influence of fire on these processes.