Wildfire-Driven Forest Conversion in Western North American Landscapes
Author
Coop, Jonathan DParks, Sean A
Stevens-Rumann, Camille S
Crausbay, Shelley D
Higuera, Philip E
Hurteau, Matthew D
Tepley, Alan
Whitman, Ellen
Assal, Timothy
Collins, Brandon M
Davis, Kimberley T
Dobrowski, Solomon
Falk, Donald A
Fornwalt, Paula J
Fulé, Peter Z
Harvey, Brian J
Kane, Van R
Littlefield, Caitlin E
Margolis, Ellis Q
North, Malcolm
Parisien, Marc-André
Prichard, Susan
Rodman, Kyle C
Affiliation
Univ Arizona, Sch Nat Resources & EnvironmIssue Date
2020-07-01Keywords
Climate Changeecological transformation
high-severity fire
stand-replacing fire
tree regeneration
tree seedlings
Vegetation type conversion
Wildfire
Metadata
Show full item recordPublisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESSCitation
Coop, J. D., Parks, S. A., Stevens-Rumann, C. S., Crausbay, S. D., Higuera, P. E., Hurteau, M. D., ... & Rodman, K. C. (2020). Wildfire-driven forest conversion in western North American landscapes. BioScience, 70(8), 659-673.Journal
BioscienceRights
© The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).Collection Information
This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at repository@u.library.arizona.edu.Abstract
Changing disturbance regimes and climate can overcome forest ecosystem resilience. Following high-severity fire, forest recovery may be compromised by lack of tree seed sources, warmer and drier postfire climate, or short-interval reburning. A potential outcome of the loss of resilience is the conversion of the prefire forest to a different forest type or nonforest vegetation. Conversion implies major, extensive, and enduring changes in dominant species, life forms, or functions, with impacts on ecosystem services. In the present article, we synthesize a growing body of evidence of fire-driven conversion and our understanding of its causes across western North America. We assess our capacity to predict conversion and highlight important uncertainties. Increasing forest vulnerability to changing fire activity and climate compels shifts in management approaches, and we propose key themes for applied research coproduced by scientists and managers to support decision-making in an era when the prefire forest may not return.Note
Open access articleISSN
0006-3568PubMed ID
32821066Version
Final published versionae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1093/biosci/biaa061
Scopus Count
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Institute of Biological Sciences. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
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