Before and after the Flames: An Ecological Examination of the Factors That Influence Forest Fire Effects and Post-fire Recovery and Resilience

Dear Colleagues,

Fire-adapted and fire-prone forests are found across the globe, and the incidence of fire in these systems affects and is affected by the people and societies living in their midst. From Indigenous cultural burns and prescribed fire to natural ignitions and human-caused wildfire, the effects of burning can have rejuvenating or devastating effects on ecological communities, forest resources and ecosystem services. While integrated long-term forest strategies and management plans can restore and support sustainable forests, climate change, fire-suppression policies and misguided resource extraction can degrade, fragment or cause lasting harm to productivity, native species and forest ecosystems.

For this Special Issue, we invite contributions from researchers whose work explores and offers insight into how forests respond to natural or human-caused fire and which factors play important roles in determining post-fire forest recovery and resilience. We encourage research that examines these issues across a wide breadth of geographies and contexts—from the boreal forests to the tropics and from remote wilderness areas to heavily managed forest systems and those at the agricultural frontier and wildland-urban interface, or WUI. We welcome studies that employ a range of research techniques, from on-the-ground data collection and monitoring to remote sensing and modeling. With the collection of studies published in this Special Issue, we aim to highlight (1) the commonalities and idiosyncrasies of how pre- and post-fire conditions lead to or detract from post-fire resilience; (2) generalized or system-specific recommendations for preparing for, managing and adapting to future fire regimes; and (3) promising quantitative techniques for studying, monitoring and informing how we ensure the integrity and function of fire-adapted forests.

Dr. John N. Williams
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• disturbance regime
• ecosystem function
• fire return interval
• fuels
• prescribed fire
• regeneration
• severity
• species composition
• stand dynamics
• wildfire