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Aims and scope

Fire Ecology is the international scientific journal of the Association for Fire Ecology. It publishes peer-reviewed, impactful articles on all ecological and management aspects relating to wildland fire. While the topics considered for publication are broad, manuscripts submitted to Fire Ecology must have a direct link to wildland fire and should include discussion of the ecological, management, or policy implications. Wildfire and prescribed fire research are welcome. Only high-quality manuscripts with wide international appeal will be considered. We welcome submissions on topics that include a broad range of research on the ecological relationships of fire to its environment, including, but not limited to:

  • Fire ecology (physical and biological fire effects, fire regimes, etc.)
  • Fire management
  • Fire science and modeling
  • Wildland fuel
  • Inter- or cross-disciplinary fire-related topics
  • Wildland fire law and policy
  • Wildfire planning and risk management
  • Social aspects (geography, sociology, anthropology, etc.) of wildland fire
  • Wildland fire technology transfer products

Fire Ecology Chats
Podcast Series by the Association for Fire Ecology

Fire Social Science
Section Collection
First article published: 22 July 2024

3D Fuels: characterizing the structure and composition of wildland fuels in three dimensions
Editors: Susan J. Prichard, Michelle Bester, Michael R. Gallagher, Andrew T. Hudak, Maureen C. Kennedy, Russell A. Parsons, Nuria Sánchez-López, Nicholas S. Skowronski
First article: forthcoming

Indigenous Stewardship: Addressing the fire crisis in the western USA
Editors: Scott L. Stephens, Sharon M. Hood, Eric E. Knapp, Jeffrey M. Kane, Thomas W. Swetnam, James A. Lutz, Andrea E. Thode
First article published: 26 August 2024

Monitoring fire effects: Lessons learned through long-term observations
Editors: J. Kevin Hiers, C. Alina CanslerPhillip J. van Mantgem
First article: forthcoming

Opening oak forests to woodlands and new ideas
Editors: Lauren S. Pile Knapp, Michael C. Stambaugh, Morgan Varner
First article published: 30 January 2024

Pyro-ecophysiology: Unraveling the physiological connections between climate, fuel dynamics, fire behavior and fire effects
Editors: William M. Jolly, Victor Resco de Dios, Tegan P. Brown, Rachael H. Nolan
First article: forthcoming

See full list of Fire Ecology collections here.

In Review: Fire Ecology’s Preprint Service

Fire Ecology, in partnership with Research Square, now offers In Review: a journal-integrated preprint service.

Authors choosing this free optional service will be able to:

  • Share their work with fellow researchers to read, comment on, and cite even before publication
  • Showcase their work to funders and others with a citable DOI while it is still under review
  • Track their manuscript—including seeing when reviewers are invited, and when reports are received

See what the Fire Ecology In Review platform looks like!

Students & Early Career Researchers

The completion of a PhD thesis often provides an excellent opportunity to publish your results, review a key topic, provide new perspectives, or develop new methodology. Fire Ecology encourages all students, and especially its SAFE members and early career researchers (ECRs), to publish one of these article types: Original research, Review, Forum, Technical note or Field note.

Therefore, as a student or ECR (defined as being within one year of award of your PhD degree) listed as the first author of one of the above article types accepted, you will receive a voucher for free access to any Springer publication in eBook form (up to a maximum value of 250 Euros/US dollars, and maximum one per year) in perpetuity.

Please read more about these article types and the submission guidelines: Original research, Review, Forum, Technical note or Field note.

2024 Outstanding Associate Editor

2023 Associate Editor DLP2

Dr. David L. Peterson, Professor of Forest Biology at the University of Washington, and Emeritus Senior Research Scientist with the USDA Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station in Corvallis, Oregon, has conducted research on fire science and climate change throughout the western United States; and has published 280 scientific articles and 5 books on these topics. He was a contributing author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and was co-lead for the Forests chapter of the Fourth National Climate Assessment. Prof. Peterson was formerly Editor-in-Chief for Northwest Science (Northwest Scientific Association), and served as Associate Editor for Ecological Applications (Wiley), Canadian Journal of Forest Science (Canadian Science Publishing), and Environmental Science and Policy (Elsevier). He currently works on climate change vulnerability assessments and adaptation on federal lands in the western United States in association with the USDA Northwest Climate Hub and the Western Wildland Environmental Threat Assessment Center. Prof. Peterson lives on Mountain Heart Tree Farm in northwest Washington, where he has planted 3000 native trees and cultivates bonsai, epiphyllums, and a variety of vegetables, fruits, and flowers.

Editor's Note: Dave has been a major rock on our editorial mountain since Fire Ecology's inception. He has taken the most contentious and ground-breaking papers and lead the review of these papers with objectivity and professionalism. Dave has also stepped in and taken over the AE role on nearly all our major emergencies. His reviews are of the highest quality, they are done quickly and without snags.  Thank you, Dave, for all the work you have done for Fire Ecology throughout your career.

2024 Journal Service Award

2023 Associate Editor KShort

Dr. Karen C. Short, Research Ecologist at the USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station located at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, Montana, began her career in wildland fire science studying the effects of prescribed burns in southwestern national parks. Her current research is focused on wildfire risk assessment and mitigation efforts at national and regional scales. To support that work, Dr. Short has developed and maintains several fundamental wildfire activity datasets and is a member of an informal confederation of interagency teams working to improve the availability and quality of wildland fire data for research and fire management applications. 

Editor's Note: Karen volunteered to be an editor for a special collection in Fire Ecology. Unbeknownst to her, most of the papers in that collection were written by authors who were also editors of the collection. As a result, Karen was assigned eight articles over the last two years and, at one time, she was working on five articles simultaneously–a new record for Fire Ecology. We thank her for the service above and beyond the call.

Impact and Community: Reasons to Publish with Us

Join the Fire Ecology community as we celebrate success, growth, and commitment to improving the knowledge of fire ecology and uses of fire in resilient landscape management.

Read More

Fire Social Science

The section collection welcomes contributions from any social science discipline and related interdisciplinary research. While qualitative, quantitative, mixed-methods and theory-based research will be considered, we particularly encourage articles based on rich empirical fieldwork.

UN SDG 3 (Good Health & Well-being); SDG 4 (Quality Education); SDG 5 (Gender Equality); SDG 8 (Decent Work); SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities); SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities); SDG 13 (Climate Action); SDG 15 (Life on Land); SDG 16 (Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions); SDG 17 (Partnerships for the Goals)

3D Fuels: characterizing the structure and composition of wildland fuels in three dimensions

Editors: Susan J. PrichardMichelle BesterMichael R. GallagherAndrew T. Hudak, Maureen C. Kennedy, Russell A. ParsonsNuria Sánchez-LópezNicholas S. Skowronski

This topical collection focuses on advancing wildland fuel characterization and mapping by integrating airborne and ground-based remote sensing with field sampling to support next-generation fire behavior and smoke models using realistic 3D representations.

Indigenous Stewardship: Addressing the fire crisis in the western USA

Editors: Scott L. Stephens, Sharon M. Hood, Eric E. Knapp, Jeffrey M. Kane, Thomas W. Swetnam, James A. Lutz, Andrea E. Thode

In this collection, Western scientists and Indigenous practitioners come together to explore ways to prioritize forest resilience on private, tribal, and public lands for the long-term. This unique partnership highlights the broad support for finally addressing the roots of the wildfire crisis.

Monitoring fire effects: Lessons learned through long-term observations

Editors: J. Kevin Hiers, C. Alina Cansler, Phillip van Mantgem

This collection aims to improve our understanding of fire-caused changes and enable models of fire effects and vegetation recovery to better provide realistic outputs.

Opening oak forests to woodlands and new ideas

Editors: Lauren S. Pile KnappMichael C. StambaughMorgan Varner

This collection of papers is focused on eastern U.S. oak ecosystems, and how many of these ecosystems have been influenced by fire for millennia and occurred across gradients from savannas to woodlands to forests, based on presentations from the 7th Fire in Eastern Oak Forests Conference held in Tyler, Texas, USA on May 16-18, 2023.

Pyro-ecophysiology: Unraveling the physiological connections between climate, fuel dynamics, fire behavior and fire effects

Editors: William M. Jolly, Víctor Resco de Dios, Tegan P. Brown, Rachael H. Nolan

This evolving field seeks to explain fire behavior and fire effects phenomena through physical and physiological processes at the leaf, whole plant, species and plant functional type scales and it explores how these factors scale across landscapes.

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Annual Journal Metrics

  • Citation Impact 2023
    Journal Impact Factor: 3.6
    5-year Journal Impact Factor: 4.6
    Source Normalized Impact per Paper (SNIP): 1.352
    SCImago Journal Rank (SJR): 1.028

    Speed 2023
    Submission to first editorial decision (median days): 14
    Submission to acceptance (median days): 156

    Usage 2023
    Downloads: 514,573
    Altmetric mentions: 687