Fire has been described as both a major ecological force necessary for long-term functioning of Sierra Nevada ecosystems and as one of the greatest threats to human and natural resources (SNEP 1996a). Fire has shaped the terrestrial ecosystems of the Sierra Nevada for millennia. Before the mid-1800s, fires generally were frequent and mostly of low to moderate intensity, from lower-elevation blu...

Widespread synchronous wildfires driven by climatic variation, such as those that swept western North America during 1996, 2000, and 2002, can result in major environmental and societal impacts. Understanding relationships between continental-scale patterns of drought and modes of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) such as El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and...

As part of the LBA-SMOCC (Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia – Smoke, Aerosols, Clouds, Rainfall, and Climate) 2002 campaign, we studied the emission of carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), and aerosol particles from Amazonian deforestation fires using an instrumented aircraft. Emission ratios for aerosol number (CN) relative to CO (ERCN/CO) fell in the range 14–32 c...

We reconstructed fire occurrence near a fur-trade era canoe travel corridor (used ca. 1780-1802) in the Quetico-Superior region west of Lake Superior to explore the possibility of human influence on pre-fire suppression rates of fire occurrence. Our research objectives were to (1) examine the spatial and temporal patterns of fire in the study area, (2) test fires' strength of association with r...

Wildland fire managers deploy suppression resources to bases and dispatch them to fires to maximize the percentage of fires that are successfully contained before unacceptable costs and losses occur. Deployment is made with budget constraints and uncertainty about the daily number, location, and intensity of fires, all of which affect initial-attack success. To address the deployment problem, w...

The local and regional impacts of open fires and trash burning on ground-level ozone (O3) and fine carbonaceous aerosols in the Mexico City Metropolitan Area (MCMA) and surrounding region during two high fire periods in March 2006 have been evaluated using WRFCHEM model. The model captured reasonably well the measurement-derived magnitude and temporal variation of the biomass burning organic ae...

1. Bark is a vital and very visible part of woody plants, yet only recently has bark characteristics started to be considered as key traits structuring communities and biomes. Bark thickness is very variable among woody plants, and I hypothesize that fire is a key factor selecting for a thick bark, and thus, at the global scale, a significant proportion of the variability in bark thickness is e...