The authors found that long term climatic stress, measured by climatic water deficit, predisposed trees to higher mortality from fire damage. The author suggest that warming temperatures increase fire severity, and ultimately tree mortality, independent of fire intensity.

The authors found that stands affected by bark beetle outbreaks had higher surface fuel loadings, but lower canopy fuel loadings than unaffected stands. The bark beetle outbreaks were partially driven by tree stress due to drought conditions. The authors suggest that future trends toward more frequent and longer-term drought may result in increases in bark beetle activity, alterations to fuel loads and subsequent increases in fire hazard.

Prescribed fire treatments reduced the potential for active crown fire compared to the control plots or pretreatment levels. Increases in drought and wind conditions input into either model produced increases in active crown fire, however, the crowning and torching index was two and three times higher, respectively, in areas that had been treated than those with no treatment.

The authors found that surface fire intensity and crown fire initiation were both strongly related to weather factors (temperature, precipitation, wind speed, and relative humidity) significantly more so than fuel components. Subalpine forests historically only burned during extreme weather events, such as prolonged drought. The authors suggest that during extreme weather events, fuels become increasingly less important in determining fire behavior as forest stands pass a threshold that permits crown fire initiation. They also found a significant correlation between annual area burned and fire intensity directly related to the weather variable frequency. Years where large area burned were associated with extreme fire weather and subsequent high intensity fire.