Publications

Private landowners are important actors in landscape-level wildfire risk management. Accordingly, wildfire programs and policy encourage wildland–urban interface homeowners to engage with local organizations to properly mitigate wildfire risk on their parcels. We investigate whether parcel-level wildfire risk assessment data, commonly used to inform community-level planning and resource...

Southern California has a long history of damaging debris flows after wildfire. Despite recurrent loss, forecasts of the frequency and magnitude of postfire debris flows are not available for the region like they are for earthquakes. Instead, debris flow hazards are typically assessed in a reactive manner after wildfires. Such assessments are crucial for evaluating debris flow risk by...

History of prescription burning and wildfires in the three Sierra Nevada National Park Service (NPS) parks and adjacent US Forest Service (USFS) forests is presented. Annual prescription (Rx) burns began in 1968 in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, followed by Yosemite National Park and Lassen Volcanic National Park. During the last third of the 20th century, USFS national forests...

American black bears (Ursus americanus) are endemic to North America, having speciated from other ursids some 1.2 to 1.8 million years ago (Kurtn & Anderson 1994). During that time, black bears came to occupy nearly all of the forested areas of the North American continent. Historically, black bears were one of the most important mammals to indigenous peoples of North America by...

We surveyed for Least Bell’s Vireos (Vireo bellii pusillus; vireo) and Southwestern Willow Flycatchers (Empidonax traillii extimus; flycatcher) along the San Luis Rey River, between College Boulevard in Oceanside and Interstate 15 in Fallbrook, California (middle San Luis Rey River), in 2020. Surveys were conducted from April 13 to July 13 (vireo) and from May 14 to July 13 (flycatcher)...

Streamflow records available before and after wildfire in a small, mixed conifer, sub-alpine monsoonal dominated watershed in New Mexico provided a unique opportunity to calibrate a watershed model (PRMS) for pre- and postfire conditions. The calibrated model was then used to simulate the hydrologic effects of fire. Simulated postfire surface runoff averaged 14.7 times greater than...

The intersection of expanding human development and wildland landscapes—the “wildland–urban interface” or WUI—is one of the most vexing contexts for fire management because it involves complex interacting systems of people and nature. Here, we document the dynamism and stability of an ancient WUI that was apparently sustainable for more than 500 y. We combine ethnography, archaeology...

ContextMontane grasslands and forest-grassland ecotones are unique and dynamic components of many landscapes, but the processes that regulate their dynamics are difficult to observe over ecologically relevant time spans.ObjectivesWe aimed to demonstrate the efficacy of using grassland-forest ecotone trees to reconstruct spatial and temporal properties of the historical fire regime in a...

Ash and surface water samples collected after wildfires in four different geographical locations (California, Colorado, Kansas and Alberta) were analyzed. The ash samples were leached with deionized water, and leachates were concentrated by solid phase extraction and analyzed by liquid chromatography/time-of-flight mass spectrometry. In addition, three surface water samples and a...

Riverine measurements of sediment and solute transport give empirical basin-scale estimates of bed-load, suspended-sediment, and silicate-solute fluxes for 100,000 km2 of northwestern California and western Oregon. This spatially explicit sediment budget shows the multifaceted control of geology and physiography on the rates and processes of fluvial denudation. Bed-load transport is...

Wetland ecosystems perform a multitude of services valued by society and provide critical habitat for migratory birds and other wildlife. Despite their importance, wetlands have been lost to different local, regional, and global drivers. Remaining wetlands are extremely sensitive to changing temperature and precipitation regimes. Management of grassland areas in wetland catchments may be...

We sequenced the coding-complete genome of an avian orthoavulavirus serotype 16 (AOAV-16) isolate recovered from emperor goose (Anser canagicus) feces collected in Alaska. The detection of AOAV-16 in North America and genomic sequencing of the resultant isolate confirms that the geographic distribution of this virus extends beyond Asia.