The natural cycle of landscape fire maintains the ecological health of the land, yet adverse health effects associated with exposure to emissions from wildfire produce public health and clinical challenges. Systematic reviews conclude that a positive association exists between exposure to wildfire smoke or wildfire particulate matter (PM2.5) and all-cause mortality and respiratory morbidity.

Wildfire episodes pose a significant public health threat in the United States. Adverse health impacts associated with wildfires occur near the burn area as well as in places far downwind due to wildfire smoke exposures.

Measuring post-fire effects at landscape scales is critical to an ecological understanding of wildfire effects.

Rangeland wildfire is a wicked problem that cuts across a mosaic of public and private rangelands in the western United States and countless countries worldwide. Fine fuel accumulation in these ecosystems contributes to large-scale wildfires and undermines plant communities’ resistance to invasive annual grasses and resilience to disturbances such as fire.

The exotic annual grass ventenata ( Ventenata dubia L.) is raising concern as it rapidly invades multiple ecosystem types within the United States, including sagebrush steppe, ponderosa pine forests, woodlands, and much of the Palouse and Pacific Northwest Bunchgrass Prairie (PNB).

Ventenata (Ventenata dubia L.) is an invasive annual grass that has rapidly expanded its range across temperate grassland and shrub-steppe ecosystems in western North America. However, there is little published regarding its ecology, especially its relationship with fire on rangelands.

On the Ground: Invasive annual grasses pose a widespread threat to western rangelands, and a strategic and proactive approach is needed to tackle this problem. Oregon partners used new spatial data to develop a geographic strategy for management of invasive annual grasses at landscape scales across jurisdictional boundaries.

• Effective wildland fire response and suppression are critical for reducing the size of frequent and severe wildfires, thereby reducing the risk of post-fire conversion to invasive annual grass-dominated plant communities. • Wildland firefighter safety and strategic deployment of resources are paramount for timely initial attack to prevent incidents from escalating.

The postglacial history of vegetation, wildfire, and climate in the Cascade Range (Oregon) is only partly understood. This study uses high-resolution macroscopic charcoal and pollen analysis from a 13-m, 14,500 years sediment record from Gold Lake, located in a montane forest, to reconstruct forest vegetation and fire history.

The wildland-urban interface (WUI), where housing is in close proximity to or intermingled with wildland vegetation, is widespread throughout the United States, but it is unclear how this type of housing development affects public lands.