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Life with Fire: Prescriptions for Resilience



Edited by Morgan Varner, Sharon M. Hood, Núria Prat-Guitart, Kevin M. Robertson, Sarah M. McCaffrey

More prescribed fire, cultural burning, and beneficial wildfires are urgently needed to manage the escalating magnitude of wildfire impacts on society and to achieve conservation goals in landscapes around the world. The 9th International Fire Ecology and Management Congress, held on November 30 - December 4, 2021, brought the wildland fire community together to discuss strategies to sustain native wildlife and biodiversity, enhance ecosystem services and resilience, mitigate climate change impacts, and reduce undesirable impacts on human and natural communities.

This Fire Ecology special collection includes topics presented, both oral and poster, at the Fire Ecology and Management Congress.


  1. Tree litter is the primary fuel affecting surface fire behavior in most fire-prone forest and woodland ecosystems in northeastern North America. Fire exclusion and land use changes have dramatically altered fi...

    Authors: Jesse K. Kreye, Jeffrey M. Kane and J. Morgan Varner
    Citation: Fire Ecology 2023 19:21
    Content type: Original research Published on:

  2. Maximizing the effectiveness of fuel treatments at landscape scales is a key research and management need given the inability to treat all areas at risk from wildfire. We synthesized information from case stud...

    Authors: Alexandra K. Urza, Brice B. Hanberry and Theresa B. Jain
    Citation: Fire Ecology 2023 19:1
    Content type: Review Published on:

  3. Wildland fires are fundamentally landscape phenomena, making it imperative to evaluate wildland fire strategic goals and fuel treatment effectiveness at large spatial and temporal scales. Outside of simulation...

    Authors: Sharon M. Hood, J. Morgan Varner, Theresa B. Jain and Jeffrey M. Kane
    Citation: Fire Ecology 2022 18:33
    Content type: Technical note Published on:

  4. In seed-obligate conifer forests of the western US, land managers need a better understanding of the spatiotemporal variability in post-fire recovery to develop adaptation strategies. Successful establishment ...

    Authors: Robert A. Andrus, Christine A. Droske, Madeline C. Franz, Andrew T. Hudak, Leigh B. Lentile, Sarah A. Lewis, Penelope Morgan, Peter R. Robichaud and Arjan J. H. Meddens
    Citation: Fire Ecology 2022 18:29
    Content type: Original research Published on:

  5. Fire danger indexes (FDIs) are used as proxies for fire potential and are often developed for specific locations. For practical purposes, the extrapolation of the underlying calculations into novel locations i...

    Authors: Harry Podschwit, William Jolly, Ernesto Alvarado, Satyam Verma, Blanca Ponce, Andrea Markos, Vannia Aliaga-Nestares and Diego Rodriguez-Zimmermann
    Citation: Fire Ecology 2022 18:25
    Content type: Original research Published on:

  7. Without periodic fire, fire-adapted plant communities across the Central Hardwood Forest Region (CHF) in the USA have undergone significant changes in forest structure and species composition, most notably a d...

    Authors: Thomas Saladyga, Kyle A. Palmquist and Cassie M. Bacon
    Citation: Fire Ecology 2022 18:19
    Content type: Original research Published on:

  8. Characterization of physical fuel distributions across heterogeneous landscapes is needed to understand fire behavior, account for smoke emissions, and manage for ecosystem resilience. Remote sensing measureme...

    Authors: Benjamin C. Bright, Andrew T. Hudak, T. Ryan McCarley, Alexander Spannuth, Nuria Sánchez-López, Roger D. Ottmar and Amber J. Soja
    Citation: Fire Ecology 2022 18:18
    Content type: Original research Published on:

  9. Mountain pine beetle (MPB) is a native disturbance agent across most pine forests in the western US. Climate changes will directly and indirectly impact frequencies and severities of MPB outbreaks, which can t...

    Authors: Robert E. Keane, Barbara Bentz, Lisa M. Holsinger, Victoria A. Saab and Rachel Loehman
    Citation: Fire Ecology 2022 18:12
    Content type: Original research Published on: