MEDIA ADVISORY: Wildfire, Forest Management, and Climate Resources
January 14, 2025
For Immediate Release
Contact: Alison Mize, alison@esa.org
The Ecological Society of America (ESA) is updating its virtual issue on “Wildfire, Forest Management, and Climate.” In addition, ESA scientists with expertise on wildfire drivers, ecosystem impacts and other related issues are available for comment and to respond to questions and inquiries.
ESA Wildfire Experts
The following ESA members have expertise related to wildfire issues and are available for comment. For help with other ESA fire experts, contact Public Affairs Director Alison Mize at alison@esa.org.
Scott L. Collins, Distinguished Professor
scollins@unm.edu
University of New Mexico
505-239-5987
http://collins.lternet.edu/
Collins is a community/ecosystem ecologist who studies the impact of natural disturbances and global environmental change on mesic and arid grassland ecosystems. He is particularly interested in the interactive effects of fire, grazing and drought in mesic grasslands in North America and South Africa, and how rainfall variability, temperature change and shrub encroachment affect aridland ecosystems in the southwestern US.
Lisa M. Ellsworth, Associate Professor
lisa.ellsworth@oregonstate.edu
Oregon State University
541-760-2001
https://fw.oregonstate.edu/users/lisa-ellsworth
Ellsworth is an Associate Professor and habitat ecologist in the Department of Fisheries, Wildlife, and Conservation Sciences at Oregon State University. She has more than 20 years’ experience working with wildfire, first as a firefighter and then as a researcher. Her current work spans issues of fire behavior and ecosystem response to fire in forests and rangelands.
Matthew Hurteau, Associate Professor
mhurteau@unm.edu
University of New Mexico
505-277-0863
www.hurteaulab.org
Hurteau is a forest and fire ecologist with a research focus on climate change mitigation and adaptation in forest systems. He uses field studies and simulation modeling to better understand how changing climate, wildfire and forest management influence tree species distributions, productivity and carbon dynamics.
Monica G. Turner, Eugene P. Odum Professor of Ecology and Vilas Research Professor
turnermg@wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin
608-262-2592
https://turnerlab.ibio.wisc.edu/
Turner is an ecosystem and landscape ecologist who studies fire and vegetation dynamics in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in the western United States. She has examined the consequences of the 1988 Yellowstone Fires for over 30 years, as well as more recent fires. Her work emphasizes effects of changing climate and fire activity on forest resilience.
Giorgio Vacchiano, Associate Professor
giorgio.vacchiano@unimi.it
University of Milan, Italy
+39 329 6497188
www.giorgiovacchiano.com
Vacchiano is a researcher in forest management and planning at the University of Milan, Italy. His work deals with climate mitigation by forests, climate change effects on forest ecosystems – including after disturbances such as forest fire or wind damage – and adaptive forest management to increase climate mitigation and reduce forest vulnerability. He is a science communicator and was included among 11 top emerging scientists globally by Nature in 2018.
ESA Virtual Fire Collection
As of Jan. 14, 2025, the online collection is currently being updated with all the papers listed below. Some of the papers listed below may not appear in the collection yet, but all the papers listed are available for viewing.
ESA’s virtual collection features relevant papers from across our peer-reviewed journals.
Ecosphere
Fuel reduction treatments reduce modeled fire intensity in the sagebrush steppe
Ellsworth, L. M., Newingham, B. A., Shaff, S. E., Williams, C. L., Strand, E. K., Reeves, M., Pyke, D. A., Schupp, E. W., and Chambers, J. C.. 2022.
Spatiotemporal variability of human–fire interactions on the Navajo Nation
Guiterman, C. H., Margolis, E. Q., Baisan, C. H., Falk, D. A., Allen, C. D., and Swetnam, T. W.. 2019.
The missing fire: quantifying human exclusion of wildfire in Pacific Northwest forests, USA
Haugo, R. D., Kellogg, B. S., Cansler, C. A., Kolden, C. A., Kemp, K. B., Robertson, J. C., Metlen, K. L., Vaillant, N. M., and Restaino, C. M.. 2019.
Repeated fires reduce plant diversity in low‐elevation Wyoming big sagebrush ecosystems (1984–2014)
Mahood, A. L., and Balch, J. K.. 2019.
Living on the edge: trailing edge forests at risk of fire‐facilitated conversion to non‐forest
Parks, S. A., Dobrowski, S. Z., Shaw, J. D., and Miller, C.. 2019.
Tree recruitment dynamics in fire‐prone eucalypt savanna
Russell‐Smith, J., Evans, J., Macdermott, H., Brocklehurst, P., Schatz, J., Lynch, D., Yates, C., and Edwards, A.. 2019.
Recoupling fire and grazing reduces wildland fuel loads on rangelands
Starns, H. D., Fuhlendorf, S. D., Elmore, R. D., Twidwell, D., Thacker, E. T., Hovick, T. J., and Luttbeg, B.. 2019.
Could restoration of a landscape to a pre‐European historical vegetation condition reduce burn probability?
Stockdale, C. A., McLoughlin, N., Flannigan, M., and Macdonald, S. E.. 2019.
Spotted Owls and forest fire: a systematic review and meta‐analysis of the evidence
Lee, D. E.. 2018
Climate changes and wildfire alter vegetation of Yellowstone National Park, but forest cover persists
Clark, J. A., Loehman, R. A., and Keane, R. E.. 2017.
Wildfire‐mediated vegetation change in boreal forests of Alberta, Canada
Stralberg, D., Wang, X., Parisien, M., Robinne, F., Sólymos, P., Mahon, C. L., Nielsen, S. E., and Bayne, E. M.. 2018.
Ecology
Less fuel for the next fire? Short-interval fire delays forest recovery and interacting drivers amplify effects
Braziunas, K.H., Kiel, N.G. and Turner, M.G.. 2023.
Browsing and fire decreases dominance of a resprouting shrub in woody encroached grassland
O’Connor, R. C., Taylor, J. H., and Nippert, J. B.. 2019.
Better lucky than good: How savanna trees escape the fire trap in a variable world
Hoffmann, W. A., Sanders, R. W., Just, M. G., Wall, W. A., and Hohmann, M. G.. 2020.
Post‐fire forest regeneration shows limited climate tracking and potential for drought‐induced type conversion.
Young, D. J. N., Werner, C. M., Welch, K. R., Young, T. P., Safford, H. D., and Latimer, A. M.. 2019.
Plant functional traits in relation to fire in crown-fire ecosystems
Pausas, J. G., Bradstock, R. A., Keith, D. A., and Keeley, J. E.. 2004.
Caught in a fire trap: Recurring fire creates stable size equilibria in woody resprouters
Grady, J. M., and Hoffmann, W. A.. 2012.
Multi‐trophic resilience of boreal lake ecosystems to forest fires
Lewis, L., Lindberg, M. S., Schmutz, J. A., and Bertram, M. R.. 2014.
Disturbance and landscape dynamics in a changing world
Turner, M.G.. 2010.
Ecological Monographs
The magnitude, direction and tempo of forest change in Greater Yellowstone in a warmer world with more fire
Turner, M.G., Braziunas, K.H., Hansen, W.D., Hoecker, T.J., Rammer, W., Ratajczak, Z., Westerling, A.L. and Seidl, R.. 2022.
Origins of abrupt change? Postfire subalpine conifer regeneration declines nonlinearly with warming and drying
Hansen, W. D., and Turner, M. G.. 2019.
Deterministic and stochastic processes lead to divergence in plant communities 25 years after the 1988 Yellowstone fires
Romme, W. H., Whitby, T. G., Timker, D. B., Turner, and M. G.. 2016.
Fire history in a western Fennoscandian boreal forest as influenced by human land use and climate
Rolstad, J., Blanck, Y., and Storaunet, K. O.. 2017.
Ecological Applications
Adapting western North American forests to climate change and wildfires: 10 common questions
Prichard, S.J., Hessburg, P.F., Hagmann, R.K., Povak, N.A., Dobrowski, S.Z., Hurteau, M.D., Kane, V.R., Keane, R.E., Kobziar, L.N., Kolden, C.A. and North, M.. 2021.
Can wildland fire management alter 21st-century fire patterns and forests in Grand Teton National Park?
Hansen, W.D., Abendroth, D., Rammer, W., Seidl, R. and Turner, M.G.. 2020.
Future changes in fire weather, spring droughts, and false springs across U.S. National Forests and Grasslands
Martinuzzi, S., Allstadt, A. J., Pidgeon, A. M., Flather, C. H., Jolly, W. M., and Radeloff, V. C.. 2019.
Large‐scale forest restoration stabilizes carbon under climate change in Southwest United States
McCauley, L. A., Robles, M. D., Woolley, T., Marshall, R. M., Kretchun, A., and Gori, D. F. 2019.
Limitations to recovery following wildfire in dry forests of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico, USA
Rodman, K C., Veblen, T. T., Chapman, T. B., Rother, M. T., Wion, A. P., and Redmond, M. D.. 2020.
Deconstructing the King megafire
Coen, J. L., Stravos, E. N., and Fites‐Kaufman, J. A.. 2018.
Factors related to building loss due to wildfires in the conterminous United States
Alexandre, P. M., Stewart, S. I., Keuler, N. S., Clayton, M. K., Mockrin, M. H., Bar-Massada, A., Syphard, A. D., and Radeloff, V. C.. 2016.
Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment
Managing fire-prone forests in a time of decreasing carbon carrying capacity
Hurteau, M.D., Goodwin, M.J., Marsh, C., Zald, H.S., Collins, B., Meyer, M. and North, M.P.. 2024.
Wildfires as an ecosystem service
Pausas, J.G., and Keeley, J.E. 2019.
Twenty‐five years of the Northwest Forest Plan: what have we learned?
Spies, T. A., Long, J. W., Charnley, S., Hessburg, P. F., Marcot, B. G., Reeves, G. H., Lesmeister, D. B., Reilly, M. J., Cerveny, L. K., Stine, P. A., and Raphael, M. G.. 2019.
Megafires: an emerging threat to old‐forest species
Jones, G. M., Gutiérrez, R. J., Tempel, D. J., Whitmore, S. A., Berigan, W. J., and Peery, M. Z.. 2016.
Large‐scale restoration increases carbon stability under projected climate and wildfire regimes
Liang, S., Hurteau, M. D., and Westerling, A. L.. 2018.
Smokey comes of age: unmanned aerial systems for fire management
Twidwell, D., Allen, C. R., Detweiler, C., Higgins, J., Laney, C., and Elbaum, S.. 2016.
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