Indigenous fire stewardship enhances ecosystem diversity, assists with the management of complex resources, and reduces wildfire risk by lessening fuel loads. Although Indigenous Peoples have maintained fire stewardship practices for millennia and continue to be keepers of fire knowledge, significant barriers exist for re-engaging in cultural burning.

Recent literature suggests that natural disasters such as wildfires often have the short-term effect of ‘‘bringing people together’’ while also under some circumstances generating social conflict at the local level. Conflict has been documented particularly when social relations are disembedded by nonlocal entities and there is a perceived loss of local agency.

Fire danger and potential for large fires in the United States (US) is currently indicated via several forecasted qualitative indices. However, landscape-level quantitative forecasts of the probability of a large fire are currently lacking.

The environmental effect of extreme soil heating, such as occurs with the complete combustion of large downed wood during wildfires, is a post-fire management concern to forest managers.

We conducted bird surveys in 10 of the first 11 years following a mixed-severity fire in a dry, low-elevation mixed-conifer forest in western Montana, United States.

Mastication of shrubs and small trees to reduce fire hazard has become a widespread management practice, yet many aspects of the fire behaviour of these unique woody fuelbeds remain poorly understood. To examine the effects of fuelbed aging on fire behaviour, we conducted laboratory burns with masticated Arctostaphylos spp. and Ceanothus spp.

A recent commentary by Smith et al. (2016) argues that our study (Davies et al. 2016) containedmethodological errors and lacked data necessary to support our conclusions, in particular that winter grazing may reducethe probability of fire-induced mortality of bunchgrasses. Carefully reading Davies et al. (2016) and relevant literatureprovides strong evidence that the comments of Smith et al.

An assessment of outcomes from research projects funded by the Joint Fire Science Program was conducted to determine whether or not science has been used to inform management and policy decisions and to explore factors that facilitate use of fire science.

A recent study by Davies et al. sought to test whether winter grazing could reduce wildfire size, fire behaviourand intensity metrics, and fire-induced plant mortality in shrub–grasslands. The authors concluded that ungrazedrangelands may experience fire-induced mortality of native perennial bunchgrasses.

This study presents an alternative approach to developing severity assessments. A synthesis of challenges using current approaches is presented. The proposed approach links heat transfer dose–response experimental treatments with plant physiology response metrics. The potential of this new approach is demonstrated via a case study.