fire

To burn or not to burn: Comparing reintroducing fire with cutting an encroaching conifer for conservation of an imperiled shrub‐steppe

Why is fire 5 times more likely to burn in the Great Basin than the Colorado Plateau?

Fire is five times more likely to burn in the northern Great Basin than in the southern Great Basin and Colorado Plateau (Littell et al. 2009). While the abundance and distribution of invasive annual grasses are likely influencing present-day regional fire occurrences in the northwestern Great Basin, Columbia Basin, and Snake River Basin, they do…

Why do large fire years often follow one or more wet years in the semiarid Great Basin?

Many semi-arid communities are fuel limited, thus the accumulation of fine fuels during wet years increases fuel continuity at the landscape level and has been closely linked to large and widespread fires in semiarid ecosystems (Abatzoglou and Kolden 2013; Allen et al. 1995; Baisan and Swetnam 1997; Brown et al. 2008; Grissino-Mayer and Swetnam 2000;…