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Fire offers a special perspective by which to understand the Earth being remade by humans. Fire is integrative, so intrinsically interdisciplinary. Fire use is unique to humans, so a tracer of humanity's ecological impacts. Anthropogenic fire…
Author(s): Stephen Pyne
Year Published:

As the climate warms, drought will increasingly occur under elevated temperatures, placing forest ecosystems at growing risk of extensive dieback and mortality. In some cases, increases in tree density following early 20th-century fire suppression…
Author(s): Alan J. Tepley, Sharon M. Hood, Christopher R. Keyes, Anna Sala
Year Published:

Background: Prairie-forest ecotones are ecologically important for biodiversity and ecological processes. While these ecotones cover small areas, their sharp gradients in land cover promote rich ecological interaction and high conservation value.…
Author(s): Penelope Morgan, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Eva K. Strand, Stephen C. Bunting, James P. Riser, John T. Abatzoglou, Max W. Nielsen-Pincus, Mara Johnson
Year Published:

Background: Prairie-forest ecotones are ecologically important for biodiversity and ecological processes. While these ecotones cover small areas, their sharp gradients in land cover promote rich ecological interaction and high conservation value.…
Author(s): Penelope Morgan, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Eva K. Strand, Stephen C. Bunting, James P. Riser, John T. Abatzoglou, Max W. Nielsen-Pincus, Mara Johnson
Year Published:

Increases in burned area across the western US since the mid‐1980’s have been widely documented and linked partially to climate factors, yet evaluations of trends in fire severity are lacking. Here, we evaluate fire severity trends and their…
Author(s): Sean A. Parks, John T. Abatzoglou
Year Published:

Climate-driven increases in disturbance frequency and extent augment the potential for compounded disturbances. Drawing on well-studied forests that experienced successive disturbances, we asked: (1) how does post-fire cover of litter, herbaceous…
Author(s): Nathan S. Gill, Daniel Jarvis, John Rogan, Dominik Kulakowski
Year Published:

The statistical analysis of wildland fire activity is integral to wildland fire planning, operations, and research across the globe. Historical fire records are inputs to fire danger rating applications, fire-potential forecast models, geospatial…
Author(s): Karen C. Short, Marty Ahrens, Sarah Harris, Jesus San-Miguel-Ayanz
Year Published:

Wildfire is a ubiquitous disturbance agent in subalpine forests in western North America. Lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia), a dominant tree species in these forests, is largely resilient to high-severity fires, but this resilience may…
Author(s): Barrie V. Chileen, Kendra K. McLauchlan, Philip E. Higuera, Meredith Parish, Bryan N. Shuman
Year Published:

Warm summer temperatures and longer fire seasons are promoting larger, and in some cases, more fires that are severe in low- and mid-elevation, dry mixed-conifer forests of the Northern Rocky Mountains (NRM). Long-term historical fire conditions and…
Author(s): Dave McWethy, Mio Alt, Elena Argiriadis, Dario Battistel, Richard G. Everett, Gregory T. Pederson
Year Published:

Fire refugia—locations that burn less severely or less frequently than surrounding areas—support late-successional and old-growth forest structure and function. This study investigates the influence of topography and fuels on the probability of…
Author(s): Garrett W. Meigs, Christopher J. Dunn, Sean A. Parks, Meg A. Krawchuk
Year Published:

Boreal forest and tundra biomes are key components of the Earth system because the mobilization of large carbon stocks and changes in energy balance could act as positive feedbacks to ongoing climate change. In Alaska, wildfire is a primary driver…
Author(s): Tyler J. Hoecker, Philip E. Higuera, Ryan Kelly, Feng Sheng Hu
Year Published:

Background: Ecological disturbance is a major driver of ecosystem structure and evolutionary selection, and theory predicts that the frequency and/or intensity of disturbance should determine its effects on communities. However, adaptations of…
Author(s): Jesse E. D. Miller, Hugh Safford
Year Published:

This year, Smokey Bear turns 75. Think about that for a second-a public service announcement campaign just turned three-quarters of a century old! The Smokey program is the longest running public service announcement campaign in U.S. history and is…
Author(s): Lincoln Bramwell
Year Published:

Unraveling the effects of climate and land use on historical fire regimes provides important insights into broader human–fire–climate dynamics, which are necessary for ecologically based forest management. We developed a spatial human land‐use model…
Author(s): Christopher H. Guiterman, Ellis Q. Margolis, Christopher H. Baisan, Donald A. Falk, Craig D. Allen, Thomas W. Swetnam
Year Published:

During the End-Permian mass extinction event (EPME) there is extensive evidence for depletion of oxygen in the marine realm. Atmospheric models based upon biogeochemical cycling predict a comparable decline leading up to this event and have been…
Author(s): Zhiming Yan, Longyi Shao, I. J. Glasspool, Xuetian Wang, Juan Wang, Hao Wang
Year Published:

The national symbol of forest fire prevention, Smokey Bear, and the slogan, 'Only you can prevent forest fires!' already existed when a group of firefighters on the Capitan Gap Fire found an orphaned bear cub clinging to a tree after a flareup. The…
Author(s): Larry S. Allen
Year Published:

Conifer forests of the western US are historically well adapted to wildfires, but current warming is creating novel disturbance regimes that may fundamentally change future forest dynamics. Stand‐replacing fires can catalyze forest reorganization by…
Author(s): M. Allison Stegner, Monica G. Turner, Virginia Iglesias, Cathy L. Whitlock
Year Published:

Sagebrush is one of the most imperiled ecosystems in western North America, having lost about half of its original 62 million hectare extent. Annual grass invasions are known to be increasing wildfire occurrence and burned area, but the lasting…
Author(s): Adam L. Mahood, Jennifer Balch
Year Published:

A century of fire suppression across the Western United States has led to more crowded forests and increased competition for resources. Studies of forest thinning or stand conditions after mortality events have provided indirect evidence for how…
Author(s): Steven L. Voelker, Andrew G. Merschel, Frederick C. Meinzer, Danielle E. M. Ulrich, Thomas A. Spies, Christopher J. Still
Year Published:

Paleofire studies frequently discount the impact of human activities in past fire regimes. Globally, we know that a common pattern of anthropogenic burning regimes is to burn many small patches at high frequency, thereby generating landscape…
Author(s): Christopher I. Roos, Grant J. Williamson, David M. J. S. Bowman
Year Published: