The historical and presettlement relationships between drought and wildfire are well documented in North America, with forest fire occurrence and area clearly increasing in response to drought. There is also evidence that drought interacts with other controls (forest productivity, topography, fire weather, management activities) to affect fire intensity, severity, extent, and frequency. Fire re...

Based on our review of literature and survey of geneticists working on California taxa, we find genetic information lacking for most species in the Sierra Nevada. This situation is likely to remain in the future, with specific groups of taxa or occasional rare or high-interest species receiving specific study. Where we do have empirical information, we find few generalities emerging, except occ...

Introduction Regardless of how horrible and devastating wildland fires are portrayed by the media, they are a natural disturbance that many native ecosystems depend on for regeneration. As the population of the United States increases, more individuals are building their homes in wildlands rather than urban landscapes. Homes built in undeveloped wildland vegetation create areas often referred t...

An emerging hypothesis in fire ecology is that pyrodiversity increases species diversity. We test whether pyrodiversity-defined as the standard deviation of fire severity-increases avian biodiversity at two spatial scales, and whether and how this relationship may change in the decade following fire. We use a dynamic Bayesian community model applied to a multi-year dataset of bird surveys at 11...

Applied historical ecology is the use of historical knowledge in the management of ecosystems. Historical perspectives increase our understanding of the dynamic nature of landscapes and provide a frame of reference for assessing modern patterns and processes. Historical records, however, are often too brief or fragmentary to be useful, or they are not obtainable for the process or structure of ...

Abstract. Logistic regression models used to predict tree mortality are critical to post-fire management, planning prescribed burns and understanding disturbance ecology. We review literature concerning post-fire mortality prediction using logistic regression models for coniferous tree species in the western USA. We include synthesis and review of: methods to develop, evaluate and interpret log...

The shapes of landscapes are fundamental to ecosystem processes at various spatial scales. Topographic roughness index (TRI) is a measure of variability in the landscape surface and a proxy of the potential of disturbances to propagate across the earth’s surface, such as a wildland fire burning across a landscape. We describe the significance of TRI, present methods for calculation, and demonst...

Understanding of the effects of wildland fire and fire management on aquatic and riparian ecosystems is an evolving field, with many questions still to be resolved. Limitations of current knowledge, and the certainty that fire management will continue, underscore the need to summarize available information. Integrating fire and fuels management with aquatic ecosystem conservation begins with re...

Despite the numerous values of riparian areas and the recognition of fire as a critical natural disturbance, few studies have investigated the behavior, properties, and influence of natural fire in riparian areas of the western USA. Riparian areas frequently differ from adjacent uplands in vegetative composition and structure, geomorphology, hydrology, microclimate, and fuel characteristics. Th...