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Wildfires, complexity, and highly optimized tolerance
Open accessAbstract
Recent, large fires in the western United States have rekindled debates about fire management and the role of natural fire regimes in the resilience of terrestrial ecosystems. This real-world experience parallels debates involving abstract models of forest fires, a central metaphor in complex systems theory. Both real and modeled fire-prone landscapes exhibit roughly power law statistics in fire size versus frequency. Here, we examine historical fire catalogs and a detailed fire simulation model; both are in agreement with a highly optimized tolerance model. Highly optimized tolerance suggests robustness tradeoffs underlie resilience in different fire-prone ecosystems. Understanding these mechanisms may provide new insights into the structure of ecological systems and be key in evaluating fire management strategies and sensitivities to climate change.
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“Wildfires occur at the intersection of dry weather, available fuel and ignition sources10.”
From Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013 (2015) · cites this paper as [10]
In the citing paper
“Global fire regimes are the combined results of available fuel, ignition sources and conducive fire weather10.”
From Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013 (2015) · cites this paper as [10]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Moritz, M. A., Morais, M. E., Summerell, L. A., Carlson, J. M., & Doyle, J.
- Affiliations
- California Institute of Technology (US)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Publisher
- National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2005-12-06
- Volume
- 102
- Issue
- 50
- Pages
- 17912-17917
- ISSN
- 0027-8424 (ISSN-L)
- 1091-6490
- PMC
- PMC1312407
- OpenAlex
- W2052350246
- Cited by
- 276
- References
- 65
- Citations by year
- 2026: 20 · 2025: 28 · 2024: 16 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 24 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 13 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 10 · 2015: 15 · 2014: 17 · 2013: 12 · 2012: 13
- FWCI
- 4.13
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Locations
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- CaltechAUTHORS (California Institute of Technology) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Fire effects on ecosystems
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Ecosystem dynamics and resilience
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Condensed Matter Physics › Theoretical and Computational Physics
- Keywords
- forest fires, fire regimes, fire management, ecosystem resilience, power-law statistics, fire simulation model, complex systems, climate change sensitivity, historical fire records
- MeSH terms
- Computer Simulation, Fires, Models, Theoretical, Ecosystem
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