Treesearch

Wildfire activity throughout western North America is increasing which can have important consequences for species persistence. Native species have evolved disturbance-adapted traits that confer resilience to natural disturbance provided disturbances operate within their historical range of variability. This resilience can erode as disturbance regimes change and begin operating outside this range. We assessed wildfire impacts during 1987–2018 on the northern spotted owl, an imperiled species with complex relationships with late and early seral forest in the Pacific Northwest, USA. We...

Understanding relationships between environmental characteristics and variation in species occurrence and density can provide information for managing human activities, protected species, and species of commercial importance in a dynamic system. To identify environmental drivers associated with variation in harbor seal (Phoca vitulina) densities in the Salish Sea, Washington, we analyzed 20 years of boat-based survey data and environmental covariates using a hierarchical distance sampling model. We included spatial, temporal, and spatiotemporal environmental covariates in our model and...

Fire ecology is a complex discipline that can only be understood by integrating biological, physical, and social sciences. The science of fire ecology explores wildland fire’s mechanisms and effects across all scales of time and space. However, the lack of defined, organizing concepts in fire ecology dilutes its collective impact on knowledge and management decision-making and makes the discipline vulnerable to misunderstanding and misappropriation. Fire ecology has matured as a discipline and deserves an enunciation of its unique emergent principles of organization. Most scientific...

Longleaf pine researchers have quantified many aspects of regeneration, growth and yield, but have focused on productive sites such as pine flatwoods and upland pine. Sandhill longleaf pine woodlands represent >40 % of remnant stands of longleaf pine ecosystems; most have no history of agriculture due to poor site productivity, yet many have been degraded by resin collection, grazing and fire exclusion. Restoration of structure and function of sandhill longleaf pine depends on understanding early stand-development processes, which are governed by fire, propagule availability, and competitio...

Quantitative wildfire risk assessments increasingly are used to prioritize areas for investments in wildfire risk mitigation actions. However, current assessments of wildfire risk derived from fire models built primarily on biophysical data do not account for socioeconomic contexts that influence community vulnerability to wildfire. Research indicates that despite accounting for only a small proportion of high wildfire hazard areas, communities with fewer socioeconomic resources to devote to wildfire prevention and response may experience outsized exposure and impacts. We examined the...

Prescribed fire is increasingly utilized for conservation and restoration goals, yet there is limited empirical evidence supporting its effectiveness in reducing wildfire-induced damages to highly valued resources and assets (HVRAs)—whether natural, cultural, or economic. This study evaluates the efficacy of prescribed fire in reducing wildfire severity to LANDFIRE-defined vegetation classes and HVRAs impacted by the 2017 West Mims event, which burned across both prescribed-fire treated and untreated areas within the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge. Wildfire severity was quantified...

Background Fire models have used pyrolysis data from oxidising and non-oxidising environments for flaming combustion. In wildland fires pyrolysis, flaming and smouldering combustion typically occur in an oxidising environment (the atmosphere). Aims Using compositional data analysis methods, determine if the composition of pyrolysis gases measured in non-oxidising and ambient (oxidising) atmospheric conditions were similar. Methods Permanent gases and tars were measured in a fuel-rich (non-oxidising) environment in a flat flame burner (FFB). Permanent and light hydrocarbon gases were...

The rare and declining Louisiana Pinesnake (Pituophis ruthveni) is highly vulnerable to extinction in the wild. Fortunately, insightful members of the zoo community established a captive population of this species in the 1980s. Since 2010, this breeding population has been used as a source of individuals for release into restored habitat with intent to establish a viable population. Initial results are encouraging, including seemingly adequate individual growth rates and the documentation of in situ reproduction. Essential elements of a reintroduction program include a committed and...

Background Longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) ecosystems are recognized as biodiversity hotspots, and their sustainability is tightly coupled to a complex nexus of feedbacks between fire, composition, and structure. While previous research has demonstrated that frequent fire is often associated with higher levels of biodiversity, relationships between fire frequency and forest structure are more nuanced because structure can be difficult to measure and characterize. We expanded on this body of research by using lidar to characterize vegetation structure in response to fire frequency at a...

In environmental and natural resource social science, place has often been characterized with rootedness and stationarity, which neglects important, dynamic connections between people and place(s). In this chapter, we (1) reexamine certain assumptions in place literature about human-mobility and place-change as necessarily jeopardizing the role of place(s) in our lives and (2) explore how a more relational, pluralistic, and dynamic view of place and place-making can help us navigate accelerating anthropogenic change and uncertainty. We hope that by moving from roots to rhizomes as an...