Fire

Downstream communities rely upon forested mountains for high-quality water needed for water supply and agricultural irrigation. However, these forests are vulnerable to disturbances such as wildfire, drought, and flood, and are also affected by air pollution from adjacent urban and agricultural lands. Interactions between forested, urban, and agricultural landscapes can have substantial impacts on...

Scientists from the USGS Ecosystems Land Change Science Program work hand-in-hand with park managers to support abundant and enduring outdoor recreation and tourism opportunities in the Nation’s national parks.

The U.S. Geological Survey Southwest Biological Science Center (SBSC) is uniquely positioned in the Colorado River Basin to provide sound information, specialized expertise, and innovative tools to support the management and sustained use of natural resources on public and Tribal lands in the Southwest U.S.

Hotter and drier conditions are making wildfires more intense and destructive across the United States. Science from the USGS Ecosystems Land Change Science Program informs local to national reduction of wildfire hazards, which saves money in avoided losses and fire suppression costs, as well as saves human lives.

WebDART is an online ecological assessment tool available to a wide audience that incorporates Landsat satellite remote sensing imagery, topography, geology, soil conditions, and rangeland geospatial and vegetation mapping to compare altered terrain with an unspoiled area that has similar characteristics in the same region. The tool gives resource managers, landowners, companies, and other...

Climate-driven forest disturbances, particularly drought-induced tree mortality and large high-severity fires from increasingly warm and dry conditions, are altering forest ecosystems and the ecosystem services society depends on (e.g., water supplies) in the Southern Rockies and across the Western U.S. We will combine unique, long-term place-based ecological data, diverse methods (e.g., paleo...

On a global scale, wetland systems are affected by precipitation extremes, changing sea level, and population growth, influencing their capacity to moderate storm surge, filter contaminants, and provide habitats for fish and wildlife. This research takes a long-term perspective on the resilience of wetlands to a range of environmental- and human-induced changes and supports wetland management by...

The past decade encompasses some of the most extensive fire activity in recorded history. An area the size of Vermont (~24,000 km2) burned in a single Siberian fire in the summer of 2019 (Kehrwald et al., 2020 and references therein) while Australia, Indonesia and the Amazon have all experienced their most intense fires in recorded history (van Wees et al, 2021 and references therein). As more...

California is experiencing changes in precipitation and wildfire regimes. Longer, hotter fire seasons along with extremes in precipitation are expected to continue. Not only do these disturbances affect the productivity and resilience of ecosystems, they also directly impact human health and wellbeing. Soils hold an immense amount of our terrestrial carbon pool, and the microorganisms and minerals...

Warming and thawing of permafrost soils in the Arctic is expected to become widespread over the coming decades. Permafrost thaw changes ecosystem structure and function, affects resource availability for wildlife and society, and decreases ground stability which affects human infrastructure. Since permafrost soils contain about half of the global soil carbon (C) pool, the magnitude of C losses...

Drought and fire are powerful disturbance agents that can trigger rapid and lasting changes in the forests of western North America. Over the last decade, increases in fire size and severity coincided with warming, drought, and earlier snowmelt, factors that projected climatic changes are likely to exacerbate. However, recent observations are brief relative to the lifespans of trees and include...

In the intermountain west, seasonal precipitation extremes, combined with population growth, are creating new challenges for the management of water resources, ecosystems, and geologic hazards. This research contributes a comprehensive long-term context for a deeper understanding of past hydrologic variability, including the magnitude and frequency of drought and flood extremes and ecosystem...