Do high severity burns lead to conversion to new forest types or a shift from forests to shrublands or grasslands? How do wildlife respond to changing habitats? And, finally, what do these changes tell us about how these ecosystems will respond to climate change? We visited the sites of the 2000 Pumpkin Fire and 2003 Aspen Fire, and talked to researchers who have been studying how forests and wildlife respond to high severity burns. View the YouTube video here.
Mitigating Postfire Runoff and Erosion
Wildfires in the southwestern US are getting larger, more frequent, and more severe due to changing climatic conditions like rising temperatures and prolonged drought (Singleton et al. 2018, Mueller et al. 2020). Catastrophic wildfire events directly impact communities, ecosystems, and cultural resources—and can pose continuing hazards long after the fire is extinguished. Flooding and erosion …
