Authors: Carolyn H. Sieg , Rodman R. Linn , Francois Pimont , Chad M. Hoffman , Joel D. McMillin , Judith Winterkamp , and L. Scott Baggett

Prescribed fire is widely applied in western US forests to limit future fire severity by reducing tree density, fuels, and excessive seedlings. Repeated prescribed burning attempts to simulate historical fire regimes in frequent-fire forests, yet there is limited long-term information regarding optimal burn season and frequency. In addition, burns are operationally feasible only in the spring and late fall, largely outside the historical wildfire season. This study quantifies the effect of seasonal reburns on woody surface fuels, forest floor fuels, and understory tree regeneration abundance in six previously thinned ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Lawson & C. Lawson) stands in the southern Blue Mountain Ecoregion of Oregon, USA. This study examined the recovery of both physical and biotic characteristics of small (<0.1 m3 sec-1) headwater stream systems impacted by the Dude Fire, which occurred in central Arizona, USA, in 1990. Data collected prior to the fire from 1986 to1988 was compared to similar data collected at various points after the fire though 2011 in order to assess changes in the geomorphology and macroinvertebrate communities over the 21-year time period. Additionally, several environmental parameters of the impacted streams were compared to neighboring unburned headwater streams in order to determine recovery status. Fire is a rare phenomenon in the semi-arid Nama-Karoo region of South Africa, but appears to have become more common in recent years, possibly as a result of climate change. The ecological effects of fire in this vegetation are poorly understood, but are likely to involve changes in structural composition, that of the shrub−grass ratio in particular. A fire burned an area of Karoo escarpment grassland (a mixture of shrubs and grasses) on the Nuweveld Mountains in October 2013. Fire trails provide access into vegetation for controlled burns in fire-prone regions of the world. We examined the ecological impacts of fire trails on plant assemblages in edge habitat adjacent to trails in eucalypt woodlands of World Heritage Blue Mountains National Park, southeastern Australia. We found that understory plant species richness, total plant density, and leaf mass per area (LMA) were significantly higher in fire-trail edge habitat than in the understory of interior woodland habitat without fire trails. Mechanical fuel treatments are a primary pre-fire strategy for potentially mitigating the threat of wildland fire, yet there is limited information on how they impact shrubland ecosystems. Our goal was to assess the impact of mechanical mastication fuel treatments on chaparral vegetation and to determine the extent to which they emulate early post-fire succession.

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