Research and Publications
View article.
Pyrodiversity may affect biodiversity by diversifying available ecological niches, stabilizing community networks and/or supporting diverse species pools available for post-fire colonization. Further, pyrodiversity’s effects on biodiversity vary across different spatial, temporal and organismal scales depending on the mobility and other life history traits of the organisms in question and
may be mediated by regional eco-evolutionary factors such as historical fire regimes. Developing a generalizable understanding of pyrodiversity effects on biodiversity has been challenging, in part because pyrodiversity can be quantified in various ways.
View brief.
Imagine being able to take a bird’s eye view of the forest: you could see the forest structure, how the trees are grouped, the height and size of each tree in a matter of moments as you cruise over. You could fly over the stand today, then again next year and examine the effects of a treatment or a wildfire or an insect outbreak. Uncrewed aerial systems (UAS – aka drones) are starting to allow managers to do just that.
View article.
Mapped representations of species−habitat relationships often underlie approaches to prioritize area-based conservation strategies to meet conservation goals for biodiversity. Generally a single surrogate species is used to inform conservation design, with the assumption that conservation actions for an appropriately selected species will confer benefits to a broader community of organisms. Emerging conservation frameworks across western North America are now relying on derived measures of intactness from remotely sensed vegetation data, wholly independent from species data. Understanding the efficacy of species-agnostic planning approaches is a critical step to ensuring the robustness of emerging conservation designs. We developed an approach to quantify ‘strength of surrogacy’, by applying prioritization algorithms to previously developed species models, and measuring their coverage provided to a broader wildlife community. We used this inference to test the relative surrogacy among a suite of species models used for conservation targeting in the endangered grasslands of the Northern Sagebrush Steppe, where careful planning can help stem the loss of private grazing lands to cultivation. In this test, we also derived a simpler surrogate of intact rangelands without species data for conservation targeting, along with a measure of combined migration representative of key areas for connectivity. Our measure of intactness vastly outperformed any species model as a surrogate for conservation, followed by that of combined migration, highlighting the efficacy of strategies that target large and intact rangeland cores for wildlife conservation and restoration efforts.
View article.
Adequate numbers of replicated, dispersed, and random samples are the basis for reliable sampling inference on resources of concern, particularly vegetation cover across large and heterogenous areas such as rangelands. Tools are needed to predict and assess data precision, specifically the sampling effort required to attain acceptable levels of precision, before and after sampling. We describe and evaluate a flexible and scalable process for assessing the sampling effort requirement for a common monitoring context (responses of rangeland vegetation cover to post-fire restoration treatments), using a custom R script called “SampleRange.” In SampleRange, vegetation cover is estimated from available digital-gridded or field data (e.g., using the satellite-derived cover from the Rangeland Assessment Platform). Next, the sampling effort required to estimate cover with 20% relative standard error (RSE) or to saturate sampling effort is determined using simulations across the environmental gradients in areas of interest to estimate the number of needed plots (“SampleRange quota”). Finally, the SampleRange quota are randomly identified for actual sampling. A 2022 full-cycle trial of SampleRange using the best available digital and prior field data for areas treated after a 2017 wildfire in sagebrush-steppe rangelands revealed that differences in the predicted compared with realized RSEs are inevitable. Future efforts to account for uncertainty in remotely sensed−based vegetative products will enhance tool utility.
View article.
The sagebrush biome is a dryland region in the western United States experiencing rapid transformations to novel ecological states. Threat-based approaches for managing anthropogenic and ecosystem threats have recently become prominent, but successfully mitigating threats depends on the ecological resilience of ecosystems. We used a spatially explicit approach for prioritizing management actions that combined a threat-based model with models of resilience to disturbance and resistance to annual grass invasion. The threat-based model assessed geographic patterns in sagebrush ecological integrity (SEI) to identify core sagebrush, growth opportunity, and other rangeland areas. The resilience and resistance model identified ecologically relevant climate and soil water availability indicators from process-based ecohydrological models. The SEI areas and resilience and resistance indicators were consistent – the resilience and resistance indicators showed generally positive relationships with the SEI areas. They also were complementary – SEI areas provided information on intact sagebrush areas and threats, while resilience and resistance provided information on responses to disturbances and management actions. The SEI index and resilience and resistance indicators provide the basis for prioritizing conservation and restoration actions and determining appropriate strategies. The difficulty and time required to conserve or restore SEI areas increase as threats increases and resilience and resistance decrease.
View article.
Using data on the patterns of participation of 10,199 individual stakeholders in 837 community wildfire protection plans (CWPPs) within the western U.S., we document the emergence of a locally clustered but spatially extensive wildfire risk governance network. Our evaluation of factors that contribute to connectivity within this network indicates that risk interdependence (e.g., joint exposure to the same fires) between planning jurisdictions increases the prospects for linkages between planning processes, and that connectivity is also more likely among planning processes that are more proximate and similar to one another. We discuss how our results advance understanding of how changing hazard conditions prompt risk mitigation policy networks to reorganize, which in turn affects risk outcomes at multiple spatial scales.
View factsheet.
There are numerous resources available to help whole communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from wildfire and other disasters. This guide presents several focused on more equitable and inclusive strategies. These resources are intended to help communities and organizations expand their work to include all those impacted by wildfire. Note that not all resources will be appropriate for all and many more resources exist than can be listed here.
View article.
The pathways tool provides a series of empirically informed processes, choices, and engagement tactics designed to foster shared agreement about the best practices for wildfire adaptation across site-specific local conditions. We outline how the tool can advance adaptation processes for a variety of users, including (1) a community oriented planning process that will help reinforce or catalyze collective action about fire management, (2) a systematic approach for monitoring differential progress toward development of fire-adapted communities, and (3) a potential feedback mechanism that informs programmatic foci or allocation of future resources across potential actions designed for diverse social conditions.
View article.
This concept paper presents a Stages of Collaborative Readiness framework. Collaborative, multi-party entities provide fundamental roles and contributions to prepare landscapes and communities to receive and recover from wildfire (identifying, connecting, and aligning stakeholders; co-developing strategies at scale; synchronizing operations; and facilitating science informed, continuous learning). The framework applies insights from the collaborative development literature to the context of forest and wildland fire risk management. It embeds the fundamental roles and contributions within a four-stage framework, identifying stage appropriate benchmarks and outcomes to increase the ability of a collaborative over time to serve those important functions.
View story map.
The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area where structures and other human development intermingle with wildland vegetation or where housing is in the vicinity of large areas of wildland vegetation. This story map provides data on two trends from 1990 to 2020: the expansion of WUI area and the growth in housing in WUI areas.