Effects of fire and post-fire management on soil condition and stability in North America: An annotated bibliography produced through a structured literature search and semi-automated content analysis

This data release includes citation details, abstracts, and results of a semi-automated content analysis for 322 publications we identified on the topic of the potential effects of fire and post-fire management on soil condition and stability in North America.

We first conducted a structured literature search to identify potentially relevant publications. We compiled a benchmark set of key publications, which we used to refine search strings in Web of Science, Scopus, and TreeSearch. These searches yielded 1,006 publications, which we filtered for relevance to our topic, retaining 322 publications. We analyzed the full text of these publications to produce a semi-automated annotated bibliography. Using the R code KWICer, we quantified the presence of relevant terms related to habitat type, environmental conditions, disturbance type, fire, emergency stabilization and rehabilitation (ES&R), soil attributes and degradation, mitigation methods, restoration, invasive plant species, location and methodology in each publication (Bailey and others 2026).

The products date from 1963 to 2025, with the majority published after 2005. Most of the products are peer-reviewed journal articles (285), followed by conference proceedings papers (18), government reports (16), and book chapters (3). We found that the publications referenced 7 Canadian provinces, 9 Mexican states, and 49 US states. 252 products mention erosion and post-fire terms, and 176 mention both mitigation and erosion. The most frequently mentioned rehabilitation method was mulching (113 publications) followed by seeding (85) and physical erosion controls such as straw wattles (34). Summary information about the bibliography is included in a set of figures that show the number of products by product type, year, ecosystem type, and geographic area, as well as matrices that show the frequency and co-occurrence of relevant terms used in the products. Together with the annotated bibliography CSV, these elements provide key information that can inform future decision-making and analyses related to soil management after fire.