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Aims and scope

Fire Ecology is the international scientific journal supported by the Association for Fire Ecology. It publishes peer-reviewed articles on all ecological and management aspects relating to wildland fire. 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:

  • Ecology (physical and biological fire effects, fire regimes, etc.)
  • Fire management
  • Fire science and modeling
  • Fuel
  • Inter- or cross-disciplinary fire-related topics
  • Law and policy
  • Planning and risk management
  • Social sciences (geography, sociology, anthropology, etc.)
  • Technology transfer products

Fire Ecology Chats
A Podcast Series by the Association for Fire Ecology

2023
Remote Sensing for Wildfire Management Potential and Impacts
Edited by: Padam Jee Omar, Ganesh Ji Omar, Pankaj Kumar Gupta
First article published on: 17 February 2023 

Fire Ecology Across Boundaries
Edited by: Anne Ganteaume, Núria Prat-Guitart, Guillermo Defossé
First article published on: 26 January 2023

Modeling Wildfire Under Climate Change
Edited by: Alex W. Dye, John B. Kim, Peng Gao, Larissa Yocom, Karin L. Riley
First article published on: 3 April 2023

2022
Wildland Fire Management Strategy and Effectiveness
Edited by: Erin J. Belval, Karen C. Short, Matthew P. Thompson, Jesse Young
First article published on: 4 August 2022

Life with Fire: Prescriptions for Resilience
Edited by: Morgan Varner, Sharon M. Hood, Núria Prat-Guitart, Kevin M. Robertson, Sarah M. McCaffrey
First article published: 10 July 2022

2021
Wildfire and Prescribed Fire Effects on Wildlife
Edited by: Gavin Jones, Brice Hanberry, Katie H. Greenberg, Angela M. White
First article published: 16 June 2021

Click here to view the full list of journal collections.

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.

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

Stabilizing influences on future wildfire regimes: Studies in forest burning and reburning

Edited by Paul F. Hessburg, Lori D. Daniels, Nicholas Povak, Jennifer Baron, Jocelyne Laflamme

In this special collection, we feature research that explores these reburning influences on fire regimes of landscapes and their associated fuel and successional conditions. We present studies that use the REBURN modeling framework to explore these dynamics in past, present, and future landscapes of eastern Washington State, USA, British Columbia, Canada, and northern California, USA forests.   

Opening oak forests to woodlands and new ideas

Edited by Lauren Pile-Knapp, Michael Stambaugh, Morgan Varner

This is a special collection of papers focused on eastern U.S. oak ecosystems. Many of these ecosystems have been influenced by fire for millennia and occurred across gradients from savannas to woodlands to forests. The historical ecology and management of open oak ecosystems continues to be a major line of inquiry. These collected papers represent diverse contributions relating fire to flora, fauna, water, humans, and more. The multiple submission types are the products of the diverse stakeholders and presentations from the 7th Fire in Eastern Oak Forests Conference held in Tyler, Texas, USA on May 16-18, 2023.

AI in Wild Fire Management

Edited by Shabir Ahmad, Mouna Baklouti, Sabina Umirzakova, Faisal Jamil 

Harnessing the potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) offers a reliable way to predict and manage wildfires. AI linked with imaging satellites can analyse factors such as the emergence of smoke, incidence of fire, disturbance of vegetation, and correlate them with various physical parameters of the forest such as vegetation type, climate, landscape, fire susceptibility mapping, and soil deposits to predict the occurrence and pattern of wildfires. This special issue aims to cover a range of topics related to the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques in the management and mitigation of wildfires.

Remote Sensing for Wildfire Management Potential and Impacts

Edited by Padam Jee Omar, Ganesh Ji Omar, Pankaj Kumar Gupta 

This special collection will include papers addressing various aspects of remote sensing applications in managing wildfire across the globe. It holds the specific challenges and objectives of various aspects of remote sensing applications in effectively monitoring the wildfire management system. It addresses the modest trends and benefits of remote sensing applications in introducing for fire management purposes at forestry.

2022 Outstanding Associate Editor

Morgan Varner is Director of Research and Senior Scientist at Tall Timbers Research Station in Tallahassee, Florida. Morgan has served on the Editorial Board of Fire Ecology since 2012 and led several special issues on Fire in Eastern Oak Forests and Woodlands, Restoring Fire in Eastern Oak Savannas, and a current collection on "Life with Fire: Prescriptions for Resilience. Before Tall Timbers, Morgan was a research scientist with the USDA Forest Service's Pacific Wildland Fire Sciences Lab in Seattle, and a professor at Virginia Tech, Mississippi State, and Cal Poly- Humboldt. His research focuses on post-fire tree mortality, fire adapted traits in plants, and how we overcome impediments to prescribed fire. 

Editor’s Note: Morgan has taken the role of Associate Editor of Fire Ecology to another level.  By my unofficial count, he has reviewed over 35 papers and acted as Associate Editor on at least half of them since the journal’s inception. In addition, He is currently the co-organizer of three special collections. He has never turned down an assignment and has always given comprehensive reviews of the highest quality.  If we were to look up the term “Associate Editor” in Wikipedia, we should find Morgan’s picture.  Thank you Morgan for your hard work over the last two decades.

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Annual Journal Metrics

  • 2022 Citation Impact
    5.1 - 2-year Impact Factor
    4.5 - 5-year Impact Factor
    1.300 - SNIP (Source Normalized Impact per Paper)
    1.224 - SJR (SCImago Journal Rank)

    2022 Speed
    15 days submission to first editorial decision for all manuscripts (Median)
    179 days submission to accept (Median)

    2022 Usage 
    297,161 downloads
    1,110 Altmetric mentions