The wildland– urban interface (WUI) is the area where human-built structures and infrastructure abut or mix with naturally occurring vegetation types. Wildfires are of particular concern in the WUI because these areas comprise extensive flammable vegetation, numerous structures, and ample ignition sources. A priority of federal wildland fire policy in the United States is to help protect commun...

Viet Nam’s landscape is constantly changing as land use changes. Sometimes the resources base benefits where forests are protected and allowed to regenerate naturally, bare land is reforested, or where swidden land is converted to more intensive agriculture. Sometimes resources are lost where forests are exploited for timber, cleared for agricultural or grazing, or burnt by spreading wildfires.

Each wildfire has its own “history”, burns under specific conditions and leads to unique environmental impacts. Information on where and when it has started and its duration is important to improve understanding on the dynamics of individual wildfires. This information is typically included in fire databases that are known to have: (i) multiple error sources; (ii) limited spatial coverage and/o...

BACKGROUND Big environmental disturbances have big ecological effects, yet these are not always what we might expect. Understanding the proximate effects of major disturbances, such as severe wildfires, on individuals, populations and habitats will be essential for understanding how predicted future increases in the frequency of such disturbances will affect ecosystems. However, researchers rar...

The 2013 Las Vegas Ozone Study (LVOS) was conducted in the late spring and early summer of 2013 to assess the seasonal contribution of stratosphere-to-troposphere transport (STT) and long-range transport to surface ozone in Clark County, Nevada and determine if these processes directly contribute to exceedances of the National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS) in this area. Secondary goals i...

For more than half a century, ecologists and historians have been integrating the contemporary study of ecosystems with data gathered from historical sources to evaluate change over broad temporal and spatial scales. This approach is especially useful where ecosystems were altered before formal study as a result of natural resources management, land development, environmental pollution, and cli...

Losses to life and property from unplanned fires (wildfires) are forecast to increase because of population growth in peri-urban areas and climate change. In response, there have been moves to increase fuel reduction--clearing, prescribed burning, biomass removal and grazing--to afford greater protection to peri-urban communities in fire-prone regions. But how effective are these measures? Seve...

The mountainous areas of the northwestern Iberian Peninsula have undergone intense land abandonment. In this work, we wanted to determine if the abandonment of the rural areas was the main driver of landscape dynamics in Gerês–Xurés Transboundary Biosphere Reserve (NW Iberian Peninsula), or if other factors, such as wildfires and the land management were also directly affecting these spatio-tem...

The occurrence of wildfires is very sensitive to fire meteorology, vegetation type and coverage. We investigate the potential impacts of global change (including changes in climate, land use/land cover, and population density) on wildfire frequencies over the period of 2000e2050. We account for the impacts associated with the changes in fire meteorology (such as temperature, precipitation, and ...

Temperate forest soils store globally significant amounts of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N). Understanding how soil pools of these two elements change in response to disturbance and management is critical to maintaining ecosystem services such as forest productivity, greenhouse gas mitigation, and water resource protection. Fire is one of the principal disturbances acting on forest soil C and N st...