The extent to which terrestrial ecosystems can sequester carbon to mitigate climate change is a matter of debate.

As climate change has contributed to longer fire seasons and populations living in fire-prone ecosystems increase, wildfires have begun to affect a growing number of people. As a result, interest in understanding the wildfire evacuation decision process has increased.

Research across a variety of risk domains finds that the risk perceptions of professionals and the public differ. Such risk perception gaps occur if professionals and the public understand individual risk factors differently or if they aggregate risk factors into overall risk differently.

As approaches to ecological restoration become increasingly large scale and collaborative, there is a need to better understand social aspects of restoration and how they influence land management. In this article, we examine social perspectives that influence the determination of ecological reference conditions in restoration.

A principal challenge to restoring tree-invaded grasslandsis the removal of woody biomass. Burning of slash pilesto reduce woody residues from forest restoration practicesgenerates intense, prolonged heating, with adverse effectson soils and vegetation.

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.

Climate change is expected to drive increased tree mortality through drought, heat stress, and insect attacks, with manifold impacts on forest ecosystems. Yet, climate-induced tree mortality and biotic disturbance agents are largely absent from process-based ecosystem models.

Aim Studies of fire activity along environmental gradients have been undertaken, but the results of such studies have yet to be integrated with fire-regime analysis. We characterize fire-regime components along climate gradients and a gradient of human influence.

Background. In forests subject to stand-replacing disturbances, conventional models of succession typically overlook early-seral stages as a simple re- organization/establishment period.

Climate change and elevated atmospheric CO 2 levels could increase the vulnerability of plants to freezing. We analyzed tissue damage resulting from naturally occurring freezing events in plants from a longterm in situ CO 2 enrichment (+ 200 ppm, 2001-2009) and soil warming (+ 4°C since 2007) experiment at treeline in the Swiss Alps (Stillberg, Davos).