Treesearch

The term ‘megafire’ is increasingly used to describe large fires worldwide. We proposed a size-based definition of megafire - fires exceeding 10,000 ha arising from single or multiple related ignition events. A recent perspective in Global Ecology and Biogeography argues against a size-based definition of megafire and suggest that the term is too emotive for scientific use. We highlight that many scientific terms originate from common terms. These terms are often defined once they enter the scientific lexicon, enhancing both scientific understanding and public communication. We argue that...

Fire regimes are changing across the globe, with new wildfire behaviour phenomena and increasing impacts felt, especially in ecosystems without clear adaptations to wildfire. These trends pose significant challenges to the scientific community in understanding and communicating these changes and their implications, particularly where we lack underlying scientific evidence to inform decision-making. Here, we present a perspective on priority directions for wildfire science research—through the lens of academic and government wildfire scientists from a historically wildfire-prone (USA) and...

Nepytia janetae is a previously innocuous non-eruptive species that has recently incurred multiple devastating outbreaks in the American Southwest. We report information on the life cycle, biology, and impact of this species learned during the first 3 known outbreaks in spruce-fir and mixed-conifer forests of the Pinaleño Mountains and White Mountains of Arizona and the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico. N. janetae is a univoltine, autumn- and winter-feeding wasteful defoliator with 3-yr eruptive outbreaks. Outbreaks terminate with parasitism, viral infection, starvation, and in one...

In the Great Basin of the western United States, annual grass invasion has initiated a novel grass-fire cycle that has transformed vast areas of semi-arid shrublands into non-native annual grasslands that now burn frequently. After the initial transformation, the system is so fire prone that it is difficult to find areas that have not burned repeatedly. We evaluated how the ecosystem responds in the absence of repeated fire to determine if management interventions preventing it could be used to restore the native shrubland.We created a regional-scale chronosequence of areas that burned...

Comprehensive monitoring of biodiversity to direct conservation action is foundational to addressing the ongoing biodiversity crisis. As integrative monitoring programs increasingly come online in response to multilateral biodiversity agreements, establishing best practices for optimal design is critical. Appropriately selecting monitoring locations is fundamental for producing robust biodiversity data. Despite extensive development of algorithms to systematically select sites, practical discussions of which algorithm is optimal for different monitoring settings is largely absent from the...

Understanding wildlife responses to human disturbance is essential for developing effective conservation and management strategies. Grizzly bears in the southern Canadian Rocky Mountains face increasing habitat alteration from roads, forest harvest, human settlements, and mining, which can alter the way animals move through the landscape. Deleterious effects on genetic exchange, demographic connectivity, and access to key resources can occur if movements are dramatically altered. We used integrated step-selection functions (iSSF) to model movement and habitat selection for 109 GPS-collared...

Recruitment is the most sensitive plant life stage to environmental filters. Yet, most research linking functional traits to environmental filters has focused on adult plants with little known about early plant traits, their interactions with environmental filters, or their relation to species abundance. Likewise, how such relationships might vary between native and exotic species or influence plant invasion outcomes is unclear. We quantified regeneration traits for 12 native and 12 exotic (naturalized and invasive) forbs and evaluated trait relationships and their associations with...

Whitebark pine (Pinus albicaulis, PIAL) and foxtail pine (P. balfouriana, PIBA) are slow-growing, high-elevation, five-needled pines. Recently, PIAL has experienced significant mortality while PIBA has experienced minimal decline. PIBA exists in two disjunct southern (PIBAS) and northern (PIBAN) populations. Our study compared juvenile physiological and morphological traits between the two species (PIAL, PIBA) and foxtail populations (PIBAN, PIBAS) to investigate mechanisms underlying responses to environmental stressors in their high-elevation environments. We grew four-year-old PIAL and...

Boreal forest and Arctic tundra environments collectively hold the largest percentage of global terrestrial seasonal snow cover. Тhe in-situ snow measurement network is sparse and costly in these remote northern regions. Here, we complement existing snow depth monitoring in Arctic tundra and boreal forest by presenting an extensive (64°N-70°N) snow depth dataset and description of ground-based snow depth measurements collected during the NASA SnowEx Alaska intensive field campaign, March 7-16, 2023. We also report the accuracy of snow depth measurements in shallow boreal forest and Arctic...

Recent disasters showed major gaps in emergency alerting - the process of sending emergency information to communities rapidly - where people with limited-English proficiency (LEP) and auditory or visual (AV) disabilities experience issues receiving alerts in their preferred language or formats. In this paper, we review academic literature, agency reports, and news articles to synthesize barriers and develop best practices for inclusive alerting. The barriers identified include: (1) lack of capacity from agencies distributing alerts and warnings; (2) delay or lack of information in...