Articles

Comparing Locally Derived and LANDFIRE Geo-Layers in the Great Basin, USA

Locally derived maps of pre-European settlement vegetation patterns (Biophysical Setting-BpS) and Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) were compared to concomitant products from LANDFIRE for the Wassuk Range in ...

Authors: Louis Provencher, Kori Blankenship, Jim Smith, Jeff Campbell and Mike Polly

Quantifying Char in Postfire Woody Detritus Inventories

Charred biomass generated by wildland fire has attracted increased interest as a functional component of terrestrial ecosystems. Black carbon (C) in the form of char is a widespread but unique material contrib...

Authors: Daniel C. Donato, John L. Campbell, Joseph B. Fontaine and Beverly E. Law

Changes in Fire Severity across Gradients of Climate, Fire Size, and Topography: A Landscape Ecological Perspective

Fire events contribute to landscape pattern at multiple spatial and temporal scales, and a landscape perspective can provide relevant information for assessing how a changing fire regime will influence pattern...

Authors: Sandra L. Haire and Kevin McGarigal

Long-Term Effects of High Intensity Prescribed Fire on Vegetation Dynamics in the Wine Spring Creek Watershed, Western North Carolina, USA

We examined the long-term effects of a prescribed fire in a southern Appalachian watershed in Nantahala National Forest, western North Carolina, USA. Fire was prescribed in 1995 on this site by forest managers...

Authors: Katherine J. Elliott, James M. Vose and Ronald L. Hendrick

Fire, Drought, and Human History near the Western Terminus of the Cross Timbers, Wichita Mountains, Oklahoma, USA

Dendrochronological methods were applied to reconstruct the historic occurrence of fires at a Cross Timbers forest-grassland transition site within the Wichita Mountains of southwestern Oklahoma, USA. Sixty fi...

Authors: Michael C. Stambaugh, Richard P. Guyette, Ralph Godfrey, E. R. McMurry and J. M. Marschall

Interactions among Prescribed Fire, Soil Attributes, and Mycorrhizal Community Structure at Crater Lake National Park, Oregon, USA

We identified relationships between prescribed burn treatments and selected soil and fuel attributes on mycorrhizal fungus fruiting patterns in an old-growth ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and white fir (Abies ...

Authors: Matthew J. Trappe, Kermit Cromack Jr., James M. Trappe, Daniel D. B. Perrakis, Efren Cazares-Gonzales, Michael A. Castellano and Steven L. Miller

Effect of Fuel Treatments on Fuels and Potential Fire Behavior in California, USA, National Forests

In many parts of California, past timber harvesting, livestock grazing practices, and fire exclusion have changed the fire regime from low to mixed severity to a high severity regime with an increase in active...

Authors: Nicole M. Vaillant, JoAnn Fites-Kaufman, Alicia L. Reiner, Erin K. Noonan-Wright and Scott N. Dailey

Post-Wildland Fire Desertification: Can Rehabilitation Treatments Make a Difference?

Desertification, caused by land degradation as opposed to the immediate creation of classical deserts, is of prime concern in the 21st century. As a result of human activities and climate change, the land lose...

Authors: Daniel G. Neary

Emergency Post-Fire Rehabilitation Treatment Effects on Burned Area Ecology and Long-Term Restoration

The predicted continuation of strong drying and warming trends in the southwestern United States underlies the associated prediction of increased frequency, area, and severity of wildfires in the coming years....

Authors: Peter R. Robichaud, Sarah A. Lewis, Robert E. Brown and Louise E. Ashmun

Evaluating the Ecological Sustainability of a Ponderosa Pine Ecosystem on the Kaibab Plateau in Northern Arizona

This paper describes a process to evaluate the ecological sustainability of fire-adapted ecosystems, using a case study based on ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests. We evaluated ecological sustainability by...

Authors: Reuben Weisz, Jack Triepke and Russ Truman

Private-Public Collaboration to Reintroduce Fire into the Changing Ecosystems of the Southwestern Borderlands Region

Fires caused by lightning or Native Americans were the major ecological factor in the borderlands region of Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexico prior to European settlement. Historical overgrazing and aggressive f...

Authors: Gerald J. Gottfried, Larry S. Allen, Peter L. Warren, Bill McDonald, Ronald J. Bemis and Carleton B. Edminster

A 43-year Evaluation of a Prescribed Fire: an Arizona Case Study

We evaluated the effects of a prescribed fire in a ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forest intermittently over 43 years. Changing climatic (precipitation) conditions spanned this evaluation with a sequential patt...

Authors: Peter F. Ffolliott, Cody L. Stropki and Aaron T. Kauffman

Predicted Fire Behavior and Societal Benefits in Three Eastern Sierra Nevada Vegetation Types

We investigated potential fire behavior and various societal benefits (air pollution removal, carbon sequestration, and carbon storage) provided by woodlands of pinyon pine (Pinus monophylla) and juniper (Juniper...

Authors: Christopher A. Dicus, Kenneth Delfino and David R. Weise

Do Plant Invasions Change the Effects of Fire on Animals?

Fire and invasions by nonnative plants can change the structure and function of ecosystems, and independent effects of each of these processes have been well studied. When fire is restored to areas where it ha...

Authors: Robert J. Steidl and Andrea R. Litt

Post-Wildfire Recovery of Riparian Vegetation during a Period of Water Scarcity in the Southwestern USA

Wildland fires occur with increasing frequency in southwestern riparian forests, yet little is known about the effects of fire on populations of native and exotic vegetation. From 2003 to 2006, we monitored re...

Authors: D. Max Smith, Deborah M. Finch, Christian Gunning, Roy Jemison and Jeffrey F. Kelly

Smoke-Cued Emergence in Plant Species of Ponderosa Pine Forests: Contrasting Greenhouse and Field Results

Smoke-cued seed germination and emergence is common in some frequent-fire ecosystems, but this process is little studied in frequent-fire conifer forests of the southwestern United States. To assess whether aq...

Authors: Scott R. Abella

Spatially and Temporally Variable Fire Regime on Rincon Peak, Arizona, USA

Spatial and temporal patterns of fire history are affected by factors such as topography, vegetation, and climate. It is unclear, however, how these factors influenced fire history patterns in small isolated f...

Authors: Jose M. Iniguez, Thomas W. Swetnam and Christopher H. Baisan

Special Issue: Fire in The Southwest: Integrating Fire into Management of Changing Ecosystems

Authors: Carolyn Hull Sieg, Peter Z. Fulé, Molly Hunter, Craig D. Allen, Matthew L. Brooks and Randy G. Balice

Indirect Effects of Fire Severity on Avian Communities in Ponderosa Pine and Aspen Forests in Western North America: A Review

Authors: Kerri Vierling and Leigh Lentile

What Constitutes a Natural Fire Regime? Insight from the Ecology and Distribution of Coniferous Forest Birds in North America

Bird species that specialize in the use of burned forest conditions can provide insight into the prehistoric fire regimes associated with the forest types that they have occupied over evolutionary time. The na...

Authors: Richard L. Hutto, Courtney J. Conway, Victoria A. Saab and Jeffrey R. Walters

Truffle Abundance in Recently Prescribed Burned and Unburned Forests in Yosemite National Park: Implications for Mycophagous Mammals

Truffles are an important food resource for wildlife in North American forests, but decades of fire exclusion have altered the availability of this resource. In Yosemite National Park, resource management poli...

Authors: Marc D. Meyer, Malcolm P. North and Susan L. Roberts

Modeling the Effects of Fire Severity and Spatial Complexity on Small Mammals in Yosemite National Park, California

We evaluated the impact of fire severity and related spatial and vegetative parameters on small mammal populations in 2 yr- to 15 yr-old burns in Yosemite National Park, California, USA. We also developed habi...

Authors: Susan L. Roberts, Jan W. van Wagtendonk, A. Keith Miles, Douglas A. Kelt and James A. Lutz

Responses in Bird Communities to Wildland Fires in Southern California

There is a growing body of literature covering the responses of bird species to wildland fire events. Our study was unique among these because we investigated the effects of large-scale wildland fires on entir...

Authors: Mark B. Mendelsohn, Cheryl S. Brehme, Carlton J. Rochester, Drew C. Stokes, Stacie A. Hathaway and Robert N. Fisher

Wintering Grassland Bird Habitat Selection Following Summer Prescribed Fire in a Texas Gulf Coast Tallgrass Prairie

We examined changes in winter habitat use by four grassland passerine birds in response to summer prescribed burning within a Texas gulf coast tallgrass prairie during 2001 and 2002. We used a traditional Befo...

Authors: Damion E. Marx, Sallie J. Hejl and Garth Herring

American Three-Toed Woodpecker Response to Burn Severity and Prey Availability at Multiple Spatial Scales

We evaluated American three-toed woodpecker (Picoides dorsalis) response to spatial heterogeneity of burn severity and prey availability over multiple scales at the 56 000 ha Hayman Fire (2002) located in the Col...

Authors: Natasha B. Kotliar, Elizabeth W. Reynolds and Douglas H. Deutschman

Red-Headed Woodpecker Density and Productivity in Relation to Time Since Fire in Burned Pine Forests

Red-headed woodpecker (Melanerpes erythrocephalus) populations are declining range wide, and fire is an important process necessary for creating their habitat throughout their range. In order to evaluate the effe...

Authors: Kerri T. Vierling and Dale J. Gentry

Wildland Fire: An Opportunistic Event for Reintroducing a Native Salmonid

The Missionary Ridge Fire (summer 2002) burned approximately 28 520 ha in the San Juan Basin, Colorado. Prior to the fire, no native Colorado River cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki pleuriticus) had been obser...

Authors: Julie E. Korb, Jim White and Mike Japhet

Special Issue: Fire and Wildlife Interactions

Authors: Susan L. Roberts

Nitrogen Isotopic Composition and Elemental concentration of Tree-rings May Help Map the Extent of Historic Fire Events

Elemental and nitrogen isotopic compositions of tree-rings adjacent to a fire-scar in a white birch (Betula papyrifera) are compared to those away from the scar in the same tree, and to those of nearby non-scarre...

Authors: Andrew R. Bukata, T. Kurtis Kyser and Tom A. Al

Seed Invasion Filters and Forest Fire Severity

Forest seed dispersal is altered after fire. Using seed traps, we studied impacts of fire severity on timing of seed dispersal, total seed rain, and seed rain richness in patches of high and low severity fire ...

Authors: Tom R. Cottrell, Paul F. Hessburg and Jonathan A. Betz

Measuring the Rate of Spread of Chaparral Prescribed fires in Northern California

Prescribed fire is a common method used to produce desired ecological effects in chaparral by mimicking the natural role of fire. Since prescribed fires are usually conducted in moderate fuel and weather condi...

Authors: Scott L. Stephens, David R. Weise, Danny L. Fry, Robert J. Keiffer, Jim Dawson, Eunmo Koo, Jennifer Potts and Patrick J. Pagni

Using Bark Char Codes to Predict Post-fire Cambium Mortality

Cambium injury is an important factor in post-fire tree survival. Measurements that quantify the degree of bark charring on tree stems after fire are often used as surrogates for direct cambium injury because ...

Authors: Sharon M. Hood, Danny R. Cluck, Sheri L. Smith and Kevin C. Ryan

Temporal and Spatial Distribution of Lightning Strikes in California in Relation to Large-Scale Weather Patterns

The temporal and spatial distribution of lightning strikes varies across California and has a differential effect on lightning fire ignitions. We analyzed 16 years of lightning strike data obtained from the Na...

Authors: Jan W. van Wagtendonk and Daniel R. Cayan

Analysis of Fire-related Vegetation Patterns in the Huachuca Mountains, Arizona, USA, and Sierra los Ajos, Sonora, Mexico

There is general interest among fire ecologists to integrate observed fire regimes into long term fire management. The United States-Mexico borderlands provide unique research opportunities to study effects of...

Authors: Miguel L. Villarreal and Stephen R. Yool

Sensitivity Analysis of a Fire Spread Model in a Chaparral Landscape

Due to a unique combination of environmental conditions, the chaparral shrublands of southern California are prone to large, intense wildland fires. There is ongoing work in the fire research community to esta...

Authors: R. E. Clark, A. S. Hope, S. Tarantola, D. Gatelli, P. E. Dennison and M. A. Moritz

Simulation of the Consequences of Different Fire Regimes to Support Wildland Fire Use Decisions

The strategy known as wildland fire use, in which lightning-ignited fires are allowed to burn, is rapidly gaining momentum in the fire management community. Managers need to know the consequences of an increas...

Authors: Carol Miller

Patterns in Lightning-caused Fires at Great Smoky Mountains National Park

Fires that burn unimpeded behave differently than suppressed or prescribed (management-ignited) fires. Studying this fire behavior increases our understanding of historic fire regimes. Wildland fire use policy...

Authors: Dana Cohen, Bob Dellinger, Rob Klein and Beth Buchanan

Fire Scarring Patterns in Sierra Nevada Wilderness Areas Burned by Multiple Wildland Fire Use Fires

Uncertainty associated with fire-scar reconstructions of historical fire occurrence has led to questioning both estimates of frequency derived from these methods and the inferences on fire regimes drawn from t...

Authors: Brandon M. Collins and Scott L. Stephens

Fire Regime Attributes of Wildland Fires in Yosemite National Park, USA

Past attempts to suppress all fires in some western forests have altered historic fire regimes. Accumulated debris and dense understories of shade tolerant species coupled with a warmer climate have led to cat...

Authors: Jan W. van Wagtendonk and James A. Lutz

Effects of Multiple Wildland Fires on Ponderosa Pine Stand Structure in Two Southwestern Wilderness Areas, USA

The effects of 30 years (1972–2003) of Wildland Fire Use for Resource Benefit (WFU) fires on ponderosa pine forest stand structure were evaluated in the Gila Wilderness, New Mexico, and the Saguaro Wilderness,...

Authors: Zachary A. Holden, Penelope Morgan, Matthew G. Rollins and Kathleen Kavanagh

The History and Evolution of Wildland Fire Use

Wildland fire use as a concept had its origin when humans first gained the ability to suppress fires. Some fires were suppressed and others were allowed to burn based on human values and objectives. Native Ame...

Authors: Jan W. van Wagtendonk

Special Issue: Wildland Fire Use

Authors: Carol Miller

Mapping Ground Cover Using Hyperspectral Remote Sensing after the 2003 Simi and Old Wildfires in Southern California

Wildfire effects on the ground surface are indicative of the potential for post-fire watershed erosion response. Areas with remaining organic ground cover will likely experience less erosion than areas of comp...

Authors: Sarah A. Lewis, Leigh B. Lentile, Andrew T. Hudak, Peter R. Robichaud, Penelope Morgan and Michael J. Bobbitt

Post-Fire Burn Severity and Vegetation Response Following Eight Large Wildfires Across the Western United States

Vegetation response and burn severity were examined following eight large wildfires that burned in 2003 and 2004: two wildfires in California chaparral, two each in dry and moist mixed-conifer forests in Monta...

Authors: Leigh B. Lentile, Penelope Morgan, Andrew T. Hudak, Michael J. Bobbitt, Sarah A. Lewis, Alistair M. S. Smith and Peter R. Robichaud

The Relationship of Multispectral Satellite Imagery to Immediate Fire Effects

The Forest Service Remote Sensing Applications Center (RSAC) and the U.S. Geological Survey Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Data Center produce Burned Area Reflectance Classification (BARC) maps...

Authors: Andrew T. Hudak, Penelope Morgan, Michael J. Bobbitt, Alistair M. S. Smith, Sarah A. Lewis, Leigh B. Lentile, Peter R. Robichaud, Jess T. Clark and Randy A. McKinley

Australian Savanna Fire Regimes: Context, Scales, Patchiness

The development of continental-scale fire mapping using AVHRR since the early 1990s and, more recently, MODIS imagery, is transforming our understanding of Australian fire regimes—particularly the national sig...

Authors: Jeremy Russell-Smith and Cameron P. Yates

A Satellite Analysis of Contrasting Fire Patterns in Aboriginal- and Euro-Australian Lands in Tropical North Australia

We use satellite imagery to compare and contrast fire patterns across a repeating mosaic of vegetation types occurring within the tropical savanna of the Northern Territory, Australia. Our study area included ...

Authors: Aaron M. Petty and David M. J. S. Bowman

Assessing Accuracy of Manually-mapped Wildfire Perimeters in Topographically Dissected Areas

Accurate mapping of wildfires is critical to fire management. Technological advances in remote sensing and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) over the last decade have been widely incorporated into wildfire ...

Authors: Crystal A. Kolden and Peter J. Weisberg

A Project for Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity

Elected officials and leaders of environmental agencies need information about the effects of large wildfires in order to set policy and make management decisions. Recently, the Wildland Fire Leadership Counci...

Authors: Jeff Eidenshink, Brian Schwind, Ken Brewer, Zhi-Liang Zhu, Brad Quayle and Stephen Howard

Special Issue: Remote Sensing Applications for Investigations of Fire Regime Attributes

Authors: Andrew T. Hudak, Andrea E. Thode and Jan W. van Wagtendonk