The authors tested the theory that frequent, low severity wildfire confers a heightened defense response to ponderosa pine against future bark beetle attack.

This paper examines the post-fire recovery, resistance and resilience, of understory vegetation after a mega fire along a gradient of fire severities.

The authors quantitatively compared restoration treatments: prescribed fire only, thinning followed by prescribed fire, and an untreated control, to test each treatment’s effect on forest structure and composition five years post treatment. They also projected potential forest trajectories using the Climate-Forest Vegetation Simulator under various climate scenarios.

The authors reconstructed the fire regime before and after fire exclusion around approximately 1880 to determine if recent large, high-severity fire is within the natural range of variability for Sky Island ecosystems in the Pinaleño Mountains of Arizona, U.S.

The authors examined the effects of initial fire severity on subsequent fire severity and also how the pattern of burn severity patches is affected by initial burn conditions.

The authors examined fire-on-fire interactions in two wilderness areas to determine the extent to which a wildfire can influence the severity of a subsequent fire and, if so, how long does the effect last. They also looked at the influence of topography and vegetation on burn severity of reburned areas.

The authors compared treated and untreated areas after the 2011 Wallow Fire to assess if fuel treatments reduced fire severity and increased ecological resiliency of mixed-conifer forests based on three metrics: high severity patch size, tree survivorship, and nonnative/native herbaceous understory cover post-fire.

The authors assessed potential future trajectories of forest stand structure in treated and untreated sites within the Rodeo-Chediski fire in response to multiple scenarios of climate change using the Climate-Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS).

Using the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS), the authors examined the effects of projected climate scenarios on future forest trajectories of ponderosa pine ecosystems in the Rodeo-Chediski Fire, and they further examined the potential effects of management strategies, including prescribed fire, to mitigate climate effects and increase resilience.

The authors sampled plots eight years post-wildfire that had been thinned and burned under prescription prior to the Rodeo-Chediski fire to examine differences between areas that burned at high and low severity with or without treatments pre-fire. They specifically examined post-fire species composition, exotic species response, and ponderosa pine regeneration.