Climate Change and Fire

Fire will play an important role in shaping forest and stream ecosystems as the climate changes. Historic observations show increased dryness accompanying more widespread fire and forest die-off. These events punctuate gradual changes to ecosystems and sometimes generate stepwise changes in ecosystems. Climate vulnerability assessments need to account for fire in their calculus.

Fire will play an important role in shaping forest and stream ecosystems as the climate changes. Historic observations show increased dryness accompanying more widespread fire and forest die-off. These events punctuate gradual changes to ecosystems and sometimes generate stepwise changes in ecosystems. Climate vulnerability assessments need to account for fire in their calculus.

In this article we test the notion that adaptation to climate change in grazed rangelands requires little more effort than current approaches to risk management because the inherent climate variability that characterizes rangelands provides a management environment that is preadapted to climate change.

The role of fire and climate in determining savanna and forest distributions requires comprehensive theoretical reevaluation. Empirical studies show that climate constrains maximum tree cover and that fire feedbacks can reduce tree cover substantially, but neither the stability nor the dynamics of these systems are well understood.

The 2012 wildfire season isn’t over yet, but already this year is shaping up to be the one of the worst on record in the American West.

Physiological tolerance of environmental conditions can influence species-level responses to climate change. Here, we used species-specific thermal tolerances to predict the community responses of ant species to experimental forest-floor warming at the northern and southern boundaries of temperate hardwood forests in eastern North America.

Future disruptions to fire activity will threaten ecosystems and human well-being throughout the world, yet there are few fire projections at global scales and almost none from a broad range of global climate models (GCMs).

We examined potential impacts of climate change over the next century on eight mammal species of conservation concern in western Washington State, under four warming scenarios.

Climate change is a poorly understood, emerging threat to many amphibian species. One of the ways climate change is likely to affect amphibians is through increased recruitment failure associated with more frequent climatic extremes.

During the 21st century, climate-driven changes in fire regimes will be a key agent of change in forests of the U.S. Pacific Northwest (PNW).