Recent trends in wildfire area burned have been characterized by large patches with high densities of standing dead trees, well outside of historical range of variability in many areas and presenting forest managers with difficult decisions regarding post-fire management.
Fire exclusion and past management have altered the composition, structure, and function of frequent-fire forests throughout western North America. In mixed-conifer forests of the California Sierra Nevada, fire exclusion has exacerbated the effects of drought and endemic bark beetles, resulting in extensive mortality of fire-adapted pine species.
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.
All wildfires in the United States are managed, but the strategies used to manage them vary by region and season. “Managed wildfire” is a response strategy to naturally ignited wildfires; it does not prioritize full suppression and allows the fire to fulfill its natural role on the landscape, meeting objectives such as firefighter safety, resource benefit, and community protection.
Wildfires can be devastating for social and ecological systems, but the recovery period after wildfire presents opportunities to reduce future risk through adaptation.
As a result of climate change and past management practices, wildfires are becoming larger and occurring more frequently than ever before in the Western U.S. In order to mitigate the effects of this growing threat, fire management agencies such as the U.S.
Spatial and temporal variation in fire characteristics—termed pyrodiversity—areincreasingly recognized as important factors that structure wildlife communitiesin fire-prone ecosystems, yet there have been few attempts to incorporatepyrodiversity or post-fire habitat dynamics into predictive models of animaldistributionsandabundancetosupportpost-firemanagement.Weusetheblack-backed woodpecker—a s
Accelerating disturbance activity under a warming climate increases the potential for multiple disturbances to overlap and produce compound effects that erode ecosystem resilience — the capacity to experience disturbance without transitioning to an alternative state.