Karuk and Yurok tribes in northwestern California, USA, are revitalizing the practice of cultural burning, which is the use of prescribed burns to enhance culturally important species. These cultural burns are critical to the livelihoods of indigenous peoples, and were widespread prior to the establishment of fire exclusion policies. One of the major objectives of cultural burning is to enhance California

The need for basic information on spatial distribution and abundance of plant species for research and management in semiarid ecosystems is frequently unmet. This need is particularly acute in the large areas impacted by megafires in sagebrush steppe ecosystems, which require frequently updated information about increases in exotic annual invaders or recovery of desirable perennials. Remote sensing

Fire is an important process that shapes the structure and functioning of African savanna ecosystems, and managers of savanna protected areas use fire to achieve ecosystem goals. Developing appropriate fire management policies should be based on an understanding of the determinants, features, and effects of prevailing fire regimes, but this information is rarely available. In this study, we report

The idea that not all fire regimes are created equal is a central theme in fire research and conservation. Fire frequency (i.e., temporal scale) is likely the most studied fire regime attribute as it relates to conservation of fire-adapted ecosystems. Generally, research converges on fire frequency as the primary filter in plant community assembly and structure, which is often critical to conservation

Forest fires have increased in extent and intensity in the Mediterranean area in recent years, threatening forest ecosystems through loss of vegetation, changes in soil properties, and increased soil erosion rates, particularly in severely burned areas. However, establishing the relationships between burn severity and soil properties that determine infiltration remain challenging. Determining where

Prescribed fire is increasingly used to restore and maintain upland oak (Quercus L. spp.) ecosystems in the central and eastern US. However, little is known about how prescribed fire affects recently fallen acorns under different fine fuel loads, which can vary with stand composition and basal area, burn season, and fire frequency. We conducted plot-level (1 m2) burns in an upland oak stand in northern

An often cited rule of savanna fire ecology is that early dry-season fires burn less intensely than late dry-season ones; however, few studies base their experimental design on the practices of fire managers in working landscapes. The objective of this research was to study the factors influencing fireline intensity, combustion, and patchiness for a West African savanna under common vegetation and

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

Predictive models of post-fire tree and stem mortality are vital for management planning and understanding fire effects. Post-fire tree and stem mortality have been traditionally modeled as a simple empirical function of tree defenses (e.g., bark thickness) and fire injury (e.g., crown scorch). We used the Fire and Tree Mortality database (FTM)—which includes observations of tree mortality in obligate

Vegetation of the Cumberland Plateau (USA) has undergone dramatic transitions since the last glaciation and particularly since the onset of widespread logging and twentieth century fire exclusion. Shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata Mill.), one of the most fire-dependent conifers in the US, occurs throughout the Cumberland Plateau, but its abundance has declined dramatically since Euro-American settlement

Vegetation structure, species diversity, and composition have been monitored at a fire-treatment and a fire-free control unit of a dry oak barrens and woodland complex in southern Illinois, USA, over a 29-year period and five burns. The restoration hypothesis is that fire management would result in different trends for vegetation parameters of conservation interest between fire treatment and control

The effects of climate on plant species ranges are well appreciated, but the effects of other processes, such as fire, on plant species distribution are less well understood. We used a dataset of 561 plots 0.1 ha in size located throughout Yosemite National Park, in the Sierra Nevada of California, USA, to determine the joint effects of fire and climate on woody plant species. We analyzed the effect

Wildfires produce pyrogenic carbon (PyC) through the incomplete combustion of organic matter, and its chemical characterization is critical to understanding carbon (C) budgets and ecosystem functions in forests. Across western North American forests, fires are burning through landscapes with substantial tree mortality from insect outbreaks, often referred to as short-interval disturbances. These short-interval

Thinning and prescribed fire are increasingly used to promote oak (Quercus L. spp.) regeneration in forest restoration projects across the eastern United States. In addition to monitoring the response of vegetation to these reductions in basal area, the research and land management community has become focused on the response of wildlife to these treatments. In a landscape in which forest ownership

This paper describes Fires of Change, a collaborative art exhibit designed to communicate about the shifting fire regimes of the United States Southwest through the lens of multimedia art. The Southwest Fire Science Consortium and Landscape Conservation Initiative, both of which are boundary organizations that facilitate collaboration among managers and scientists to develop and apply actionable science

Frequent-fire forests of the western United States have undergone remarkable changes in structure, composition, and function due to historical exclusion of naturally occurring fire. Mechanized tree thinning to reduce forest density and fuel loads tends to be expensive and cannot be effectively implemented across all lands, and there is increasing interest in managing naturally ignited wildfires for

In oak-dominated communities throughout eastern North America, fire exclusion and subsequent woody encroachment has replaced the “glitter” of once robust and diverse wildflower and grass layers with leaf-litter dominance. Restoring the important herbaceous components of Eastern oak ecosystems could involve pairing heavy canopy disturbance with growing-season fire, but potential negative effects warrant

The Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) program has been providing the fire science community with large fire perimeter and burn severity data for the past 14 years. As of October 2019, 22 969 fires have been mapped by the MTBS program and are available on the MTBS website (https://www.mtbs.gov). These data have been widely used by researchers to examine a variety of fire and climate science

Wildfires affect vegetation structure, functions, and other attributes of forest ecosystems. Among these attributes, bird assemblages may be influenced by the distance from undisturbed to fire-disturbed forests. Information about this influence is essential for designing management plans aimed at conserving birds’ diversity in undisturbed forests, which contributes to their sustainability. In Northwest

Many Puerto Rican ecosystems evolved without a regular fire regime. As such, many native plants lack adaptations necessary to survive even low-intensity fires. Human-caused fires are increasing in frequency, in part promoted by the presence of invasive grasses. During the afternoon of 19 February 2014, a wildfire burned a large portion of the dry forest in El Faro Natural Reserve, Cabo Rojo, Puerto

In fire-adapted ecosystems of the western USA, prescribed fire is an essential restoration and fuel reduction tool. There is general concern that, as the fire season lengthens, the window for conducting prescribed burns will contract unless management changes are made. This could occur because a number of conditions must be met before prescribed fire can be used in the field, and those are most common

In recent decades, as wildland fire occurrence has increased in the United States, concern about the emissions produced by wildland fires has increased as well. This growing concern is evidenced by an increase in scientific articles investigating effects of wildland smoke on public health, and ongoing research projects assessing wildland smoke hazards. We reviewed primary literature evaluating wildland

The realm of wildland fire science encompasses both wild and prescribed fires. Most of the research in the broader field has focused on wildfires, however, despite the prevalence of prescribed fires and demonstrated need for science to guide its application. We argue that prescribed fire science requires a fundamentally different approach to connecting related disciplines of physical, natural, and

Resprouting is an effective strategy for persistence of perennial plants after disturbances such as fire. However, can disturbances be so frequent that they limit resprouting? We examined the effects of fire and mowing frequency on eight species of resprouting shrubs in Florida scrub, USA, using a factorial field experiment. We burned or mowed plots at four disturbance return intervals (DRI): either

Fire size and severity have increased in the western United States in recent decades, and are expected to continue to increase with warming climate. Habitats for many species are threatened by large and high-severity fires, but the effect of spatial scale on the relationship between fires and habitat modifications is poorly understood. We used the 2011 Wallow Fire—the largest wildfire in the state

Litter is the predominant fuel that drives surface fire behavior in most fire-prone forest and woodland ecosystems. The flammability of litter is driven by fuel characteristics, environmental factors, and the interactive effects of the two. Solar radiation can influence litter flammability through its effect on fuel moisture and temperature. The direct influence of radiative heating on flammability

Following publication of the original article Quigley et al. 2019, the authors reported that an incorrect version of Additional 1 has been published. The corrected version of Additional file 1 is attached to this Correction. Additional file 1 was revised to include the following information which was omitted from the original publication: 1) Standard errors associated with all original supplementary

Repeated use of prescribed fire in Southern US pine stands has the potential to alter litter quality as well as forest floor mineralization, which may reduce nutrient availability. There are few studies that have investigated the effects of prescribed fire on litter decomposition in stands with frequent, partial harvests. To better understand the effects of the long-term use of prescribed fire coupled

A fire management strategy of deliberate patch-mosaic burning (PMB) is postulated to promote biodiversity by providing a range of habitat patches with different fire histories, habitat qualities, and vegetation ages at a given scale. We investigated the response of avian fauna to fire, particularly species richness and community composition, in a landscape composed of a diversity of vegetation ages

Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana, USA) have been immense in recent years, capturing the attention of resource managers, fire scientists, and the general public. This paper synthesizes understanding of the potential effects of changing climate and fire regimes on Pacific Northwest forests, including effects on disturbance and stress interactions, forest

Even though fire has been used extensively as part of conservation management in South Africa, its impact on the life history and mortality of fossorial reptiles is poorly documented. We conducted post-fire transects after three controlled burns during different seasons in Tembe Elephant Park, recorded 14 reptile species, and found fewer mortalities in winter compared to spring. Histopathological examinations

Prairie–forest ecotones are ecologically important for biodiversity and ecological processes. While these ecotones cover small areas, their sharp gradients in land cover promote rich ecological interaction and high conservation value. Our objective was to understand how historical and current fire occurrences and human development influenced the Palouse Prairie–forest ecotone. We used General Land

Prescribed fire is increasingly used to accomplish management goals in fire-adapted systems, yet our understanding of effects on non-target organisms remains underdeveloped. Terricolous lichens in the genus Cladonia P. Browne, particularly cushion-forming reindeer lichens belonging to Cladonia subgenus Cladina Nyl., fit into this category, being characteristic of fire-adapted ecosystems, yet highly

High-severity fire in forested landscapes often produces a post-fire condition of high shrub cover and large loads of dead wood. Given the increasing patch size of high-severity fire and the tendency for these areas to reburn at high severity in subsequent wildfires, post-fire management often targets restoration of these areas. However, these areas are challenging to manage, in part due to limited

Projections for the future health and abundance of whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis Engelm.) populations in western North America are dire. Not only has the species been declining due to the combined effects of fire exclusion policies, mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins 1902) outbreaks, and white pine blister rust (Cronartium ribicola J.C. Fisch), many are predicting that climate

Behavioral responses are the most immediate ways animals interact with their environment, and are primary mechanisms by which individuals mitigate mortality risk while ensuring reproductive success. In disturbance-driven landscapes, animals must adjust behaviors both spatially and temporally to maximize individual fitness. Prescribed fire is an important ecosystem driver in many coniferous forests

Fuel treatments are widely used to alter fuels in forested ecosystems to mitigate wildfire behavior and effects. However, few studies have examined long-term ecological effects of interacting fuel treatments (commercial harvests, pre-commercial thinnings, pile and burning, and prescribed fire) and wildfire. Using annually fitted Landsat satellite-derived Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) curves and paired

Increasing frequency and size of wildfires over the past few decades have prompted concerns that populations of obligate seeding species may be vulnerable to repeat, short-interval fires that occur prior to these species reaching maturity. The susceptibility of populations to this risk is partially dependent on the amount and characteristics of fuel loading over time and their influence on fire behavior

Forest management, especially restoration, is informed by understanding the dominant natural disturbance regime. In many western North American forests, the keystone disturbance is fire, and a plethora of research exists characterizing various fire regime parameters, although often only one or two parameters are addressed in individual studies. I performed a systematic review of the literature and

Large wildfires result in more heterogeneous fire scars than do smaller fires because of differences in landscape context and high variability in burn intensity and severity. Previous research on mammal response to wildfire has often considered all fires as comparable disturbances regardless of size. Here, we explicitly examine whether fire size affects relative abundances of a keystone herbivore,

Prescribed burning is used to reduce fire hazard in highly flammable vegetation types, including Banksia L.f. woodland that occurs on the Swan Coastal Plain (SCP), Western Australia, Australia. The 2016 census recorded well over 1.9 million people living on the SCP, which also encompasses Perth, the fourth largest city in Australia. Banksia woodland is prone to frequent ignitions that can cause extensive

Fire managers tasked with assessing the hazard and risk of wildfire in Alaska, USA, tend to have more confidence in fire behavior prediction modeling systems developed in Canada than similar systems developed in the US. In 1992, Canadian fire behavior systems were adopted for modeling fire hazard and risk in Alaska and are used by fire suppression specialists and fire planners working within the state

Concern is mounting that larger, stand-replacing forest fires may accelerate compositional shifts or conversions to non-forested states under a warming climate. Post-fire climatic conditions influence system trajectories by facilitating or hindering juvenile recruitment. But without an accurate, long-term understanding of where, when, and how climatic variability and other ecological factors affect

Knowledge of historical fire regimes informs the restoration of woodland communities. In the Appalachian Plateau of Ohio and Kentucky, USA, little is known about the long-term history of fire in oak–pine communities, which are declining in the region. To address this knowledge gap, two sites with remnant fire-scarred yellow pines, Hatton Ridge in Kentucky and McAtee Run in Ohio, were studied to document

Fire has historically been a primary control on succession and vegetation dynamics in boreal systems, although modern changing climate is potentially increasing fire size and frequency. Large, often remote fires necessitate large-scale estimates of fire effects and consequences, often using Landsat satellite-derived dNBR (differenced Normalized Burn Ratio) to estimate burn severity. However, few studies

In recent years, fire services in Mediterranean Europe have been overwhelmed by extreme wildfire behavior. As a consequence, fire management has moved to defensive strategies with a focus only on the known risks (the fear trap). In this region, wildfires can change rapidly, increasing the uncertainty and causing complex operational scenarios that impact society right from the initial hours. To address

Prescribed burning plays an important role in the management of many ecosystems and can also be used to mitigate landscape-scale fire risk. Safe and effective application of prescribed fire requires that managers have a robust understanding of potential fire behavior in order to decide on the appropriate tools and tactics for any burning operation. Shrubland ecosystems, including heaths and moors,

Understanding the temporal patterns of fire occurrence and their relationships with fuel dryness is key to sound fire management, especially under increasing global warming. At present, no system for prediction of fire occurrence risk based on fuel dryness conditions is available in Mexico. As part of an ongoing national-scale project, we developed an operational fire risk mapping tool based on satellite

Pacific Northwest USA oak woodlands and savannas are fire-resilient communities dependent on frequent, low-severity fire to maintain their structure and understory species diversity, and to prevent encroachment by fire-sensitive competitors. The re-introduction of fire into degraded ecosystems is viewed as essential to their restoration, yet can be fraught with unintended negative consequences. We

Regulation of the dominance of resprouting understory hardwoods is a common objective for prescribed fire in open-canopy longleaf pine (Pinus palustris Mill.) woodland of the southeastern USA. Nevertheless, little is known about the influence of individual pines on fire and hardwood mortality. We studied growing-season fires in stem-mapped stands in southwest Georgia, USA; the stands displayed large

Along the prairie–forest border in the south-central USA exists one of the most extensive areas of uncut forest in the nation (>323 750 hectares), providing unique potential for developing multi-century records of environmental changes through dendrochronological analyses. Twentieth century changes in vegetation, increased prescribed fire management, and recent years of elevated wildfire activity have

Wildfire is an important ecological process in mixed conifer forests of the Intermountain West region of the USA. However, researchers and managers are concerned because climate warming has led to increased fire activity in recent decades. More area burned will result in larger land areas in early successional stages and will potentially limit tree establishment; therefore, evaluating long-term forest

Since the beginning of the twenty-first century California, USA, has experienced a substantial increase in the frequency of large wildfires, often with extreme impacts on people and property. Due to the size of the state, it is not surprising that the factors driving these changes differ across this region. Although there are always multiple factors driving wildfire behavior, we believe a helpful model

Following publication of the original article (Hyde et al., 2015), the authors have noticed two errors in the summarizing of our results and wish to point out the following corrections:

Increasingly frequent and severe drought in the western United States has contributed to more frequent and severe wildfires, longer fire seasons, and more frequent bark beetle outbreaks that kill large numbers of trees. Climate change is expected to perpetuate these trends, especially in montane ecosystems, calling for improved strategies for managing Western forests and conserving the wildlife that

Straw mulching is one of the most common treatments applied immediately post fire to reduce soil erosion potential and mitigate post-fire effects on water quality, downstream property, and infrastructure, but little is known about the long-term effects on vegetation response. We sampled six fires that were mulched between 9 and 13 years ago in western US dry conifer forests. We compared understory

In the Inland Pacific Northwest of the United States, fire is a dominant driver of ecological change. Within wildfire perimeters, fire effects often vary considerably and typically include remnant patches of unburned islands. As fires reburn the landscape, some unburned islands remain persistently unburned. These persistent unburned islands can serve an important ecological function as fire refugia;

Endangered species management has been criticized as emphasizing a single-species approach to conservation and, in some cases, diverting resources from broad-based, land management objectives important for overall biodiversity maintenance. Herein we examine perceptions on management for an endangered species whose habitat requirements largely depend on frequent fire, the red-cockaded woodpecker (Leuconotopicus

Some have proposed that fire return intervals lengthen with elevation in montane tropical coniferous forests, such as those found in central Mexico. This would generate patterns of synchronous tree establishment in higher elevation forests dominated by Abies sp. Mill., and patterns of continuous tree establishment in lower elevation forests dominated by Pinus sp. L. However, it is common to find codominant

Evaluating fuel treatment effectiveness is challenging when managing a landscape for diverse ecological, social, and economic values. We used a Participatory Geographic Information System (PGIS) to understand Confederated Colville Tribal (CCT) member views regarding the location and effectiveness of fuel treatments within their ancestral territory within the Colville National Forest (CNF) boundary