The accuracy with which park managers can predict the behavior, spread, and effects of individual fires will be increasingly critical to decisions on when and where to burn. Models to predict fuel accumulation and consumption, fire spread, smoke production, and the effects of individual fires or fire regimes on species distributions and abundances are needed to provide m~ch of this capability (van Wagtendonk 1985). Staff members in the Sierra Nevada parks have recently undertaken a lead role in developing an interdisciplinary research program to understand and predict the effects of climatic change on species and community distribution and on fire occurrence and effects in the southern and central Sierra Nevada (Stephenson and Parsons 1993). They hope that this program will begin to provide the predictive tools necessary to prepare managers for the critical resource issues of the twenty-first century.