Context In western US forests, the increasing frequency of large high-severity fires presents challenges for society. Quantifying how fuel conditions influence high-severity area is important for managing risks of large high-severity fires and understanding how they are changing with climate change.
Background. Wildfre is a landscape disturbance important for stream ecosystems and the recruitment of large wood (LW; LW describes wood in streams) into streams, with post-fre management also playing a role.
The synergistic effects of widespread high-severity wildfire and anthropogenic climate change are driving large-scale vegetation conversion. In the southwestern United States, areas that were once dominated by conifer forests are now shrub- or grasslands after high-severity wildfire, an ecosystem conversion that could be permanent without human intervention.
Aim Ecological disturbances are increasing as climate warms, and how multiple disturbances interact spatially to drive landscape change is poorly understood.
As contemporary wildfire activity intensifies across the western United States, there is increasing recognition that a variety of forest management activities are necessary to restore ecosystem function and reduce wildfire hazard in dry forests. However, the pace and scale of current, active forest management is insufficient to address restoration needs.
Increasing fire severity and warmer, drier postfire conditions are making forests in the western United States (West) vulnerable to ecological transformation. Yet, the relative importance of and interactions between these drivers of forest change remain unresolved, particularly over upcoming decades.
Ecological disturbance regimes across the globe are being altered via direct and indirect human influences. Biodiversity loss at multiple scales can be a direct outcome of these shifts.