Fire Effects and Fire Ecology

Historically, fire has been essential in Southwestern US forests. However, a century of fire-exclusion and changing climate created forests which are more susceptible to uncharacteristically severe wildfires. Forest managers use a combination of thinning and prescribed burning to reduce forest density to help mitigate the risk of high-severity fires.

Managing landscape fire is a complex challenge because it is simultaneously necessary for, and increasingly poses a risk to, societies and ecosystems worldwide. This challenge underscores the need for transformative change in the way societies live with and manage fire.

Wildfire futures and aboveground carbon (C) dynamics associated with forest restoration programs that integrate resource objective wildfire as part of a larger treatment strategy are not well understood.

Fire regimes are a major agent of evolution in terrestrial animals. Changing fire regimes and the capacity for rapid evolution in wild animal populations suggests the potential for rapid, fire-driven adaptive animal evolution in the Pyrocene.

Invasions by non-native plant species after fire can negatively affect important ecosystem services and lead to invasion-fire cycles that further degrade ecosystems. The relationship between fire and plant invasion is complex, and the risk of invasion varies greatly between functional types and across geographic scales.

The behaviour of wildland fires and the dispersion of smoke from those fires can be strongly influenced by atmospheric turbulent flow. The science to support that assertion has developed and evolved over the past 100+ years, with contributions from laboratory and field observations, as well as modelling experiments.

Climate change has contributed to increased wildfires. Wildfire smoke exposes wildlife to hazards and mortality from particulate matter on a scale larger than the area impacted by fire.

As the climate continues to warm, the severity of wildfires is increasing. However, the potential impact of higher burn severity on ecosystem resilience and regional carbon balance is still not clear. There are ongoing debates regarding whether increased burn severity stimulates or delays postfire vegetation and carbon recovery.