Ecological departure, or how much landscapes have changed from a natural range of variation (NRV), has become a key metric in forest planning and restoration efforts. In this study we define forest restoration need as the specific change in structural stage abundance necessary to move landscapes into the NRV.
We extend a published 9000 yr fire history record from Little Lake, in the Oregon Coast Range, to 35,000 yr and compare it with the established pollen record from the site. The fire history is based on a high-resolution analysis of charcoal preserved in lake sediments, providing a fire history record that spans the Last Glacial Maximum in North America.
The rain shadow forests of the Olympic Peninsula exemplify a mixed-severity fire regime class in the midst of a highly productive landscape where spatial heterogeneity of fire severity may have significant implications for below and aboveground post-fire recovery.
High-severity, infrequent fires in forests shape landscape mosaics of stand age and structure for decades to centuries, and forest structure can vary substantially even among same-aged stands. This variability among stand structures can affect landscape-scale carbon and nitrogen cycling, wildlife habitat availability, and vulnerability to subsequent disturbances.
Context In the interior Northwest, debate over restoring mixed-conifer forests after a century of fire exclusion is hampered by poor understanding of the pattern and causes of spatial variation in historical fire regimes.
A warming climate, fire exclusion, and land cover changes are altering the conditions that produced historical fire regimes and facilitating increased recent wildfire activity in the northwestern United States.
An understanding of how historical fire and structure in dry forests (ponderosa pine, dry mixed conifer) varied across the western United States remains incomplete. Yet, fire strongly affects ecosystem services, and forest restoration programs are underway.
Dendroecology is the science that dates tree rings to their exact calendar year of formation to study processes that influence forest ecology (e.g., Speer 2010 [1], Amoroso et al., 2017 [2]). Reconstruction of past fire regimes is a core application of dendroecology, linking fire history to population dynamics and climate effects on tree growth and survivorship.
Modern works by highly skilled narrative authors and artists have become increasingly useful for telling the story of wildland fire in the United States.
On June 1, 2015, the Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Branch of Research.