Evidence for declining forest resilience to wildfires under climate change.
Abstract
Forest resilience to climate change is a global concern given the potential effects of increased disturbance activity, warming temperatures and increased moisture stress on plants. We used a multi‐regional dataset of 1485 sites across 52 wildfires from the US Rocky Mountains to ask if and how changing climate over the last several decades impacted post‐fire tree regeneration, a key indicator of forest resilience. Results highlight significant decreases in tree regeneration in the 21st century. Annual moisture deficits were significantly greater from 2000 to 2015 as compared to 1985–1999, suggesting increasingly unfavourable post‐fire growing conditions, corresponding to significantly lower seedling densities and increased regeneration failure. Dry forests that already occur at the edge of their climatic tolerance are most prone to conversion to non‐forests after wildfires. Major climate‐induced reduction in forest density and extent has important consequences for a myriad of ecosystem services now and in the future.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Many recent fires have had negative consequences for natural ecosystems and humans.
“Many recent fires have had negative consequences for natural ecosystems and humans (Balch et al., 2018;Stevens-Rumann et al., 2018).”
From Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers (2020) · cites this paper as Stevens-Rumann et al., 2018
Cites
Fitting Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using <b>lme4</b>
Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015) · Journal of Statistical Software · doi:10.18637/jss.v067.i01 · Cited by 86,835 · see citing works
Allen, C. D., Macalady, A. K., Chenchouni, H., Bachelet, D., McDowell, N., Vennetier, M., Kitzberger, T., Rigling, A., Breshears, D. D., Hogg, E. H. (., et al. (2010) · Forest Ecology and Management · doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2009.09.001 · Cited by 7,763 · see citing works
Climate-induced variations in global wildfire danger from 1979 to 2013
Jolly, W. M., Cochrane, M. A., Freeborn, P. H., Holden, Z. A., Brown, T. J., Williamson, G. J., & Bowman, D. M. J. S. (2015) · Nature Communications · doi:10.1038/ncomms8537 · Cited by 2,200 · see citing works
Lenihan, J. M., Bachelet, D., Neilson, R. P., & Drapek, R. (2008) · Climatic Change · doi:10.1007/s10584-007-9362-0 · Cited by 217 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers
McLauchlan, K. K., Higuera, P. E., Miesel, J., Rogers, B. M., Schweitzer, J., Shuman, J. K., Tepley, A. J., Varner, J. M., Veblen, T. T., Adalsteinsson, S. A., et al. (2020) · Journal of Ecology · doi:10.1111/1365-2745.13403 · Cited by 729 · see citing works
Self-citationHalofsky, J. E., Peterson, D. L., & Harvey, B. J. (2020) · Fire Ecology · doi:10.1186/s42408-019-0062-8 · Cited by 640 · see citing works
Self-citationNatural climate solutions for the United States
Fargione, J. E., Bassett, S., Boucher, T., Bridgham, S. D., Conant, R. T., Cook-Patton, S. C., Ellis, P. W., Falcucci, A., Fourqurean, J. W., Gopalakrishna, T., et al. (2018) · Science Advances · doi:10.1126/sciadv.aat1869 · Cited by 588 · see citing works
Hagmann, R. K., Hessburg, P. F., Prichard, S. J., Povak, N. A., Brown, P. M., Fulé, P. Z., Keane, R. E., Knapp, E. E., Lydersen, J. M., Metlen, K. L., et al. (2021) · Ecological Applications · doi:10.1002/eap.2431 · Cited by 400 · see citing works
A unifying framework for studying and managing climate-driven rates of ecological change
Williams, J. W., Ordonez, A., & Svenning, J.-C. (2020) · Nature Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1038/s41559-020-01344-5 · Cited by 135 · see citing works
Innovative wood use can enable carbon-beneficial forest management in California
Cabiyo, B., Fried, J. S., Collins, B. M., Stewart, W., Wong, J., & Sanchez, D. L. (2021) · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · doi:10.1073/pnas.2019073118 · Cited by 54 · see citing works
Miller, K. M., Perles, S. J., Schmit, J. P., Matthews, E. R., Weed, A. S., Comiskey, J. A., Marshall, M. R., Nelson, P., & Fisichelli, N. A. (2023) · Ecological Applications · doi:10.1002/eap.2837 · Cited by 45 · see citing works
- Authors
- Stevens‐Rumann, C. S., Kemp, K. B., Higuera, P. E., Harvey, B. J., Rother, M. T., Donato, D. C., Morgan, P., & Veblen, T. T.
- Affiliations
- University of Idaho (US)
- The Nature Conservancy (US)
- University of Montana (US)
- University of Washington (US)
- University of Colorado Boulder (US)
- Washington Department of Natural Resources (US)
- Corresponding author
- Stevens‐Rumann, Camille S.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Ecology Letters
- Publisher
- Wiley
- Published
- 2017-12-12
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 243-252
- ISSN
- 1461-023X (ISSN-L)
- 1461-0248
- OpenAlex
- W2773667339
- Cited by
- 695
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 70 · 2025: 80 · 2024: 68 · 2023: 95 · 2022: 90 · 2021: 97 · 2020: 78 · 2019: 72 · 2018: 42 · 2012: 1
- FWCI
- 34.73
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Licence
- Locations
- Ecology Letters (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Agriculture (12‐JV‐11221637‐136)
- National Science Foundation (1232997, 0966472, DGE‐0903479)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Fire effects on ecosystems
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Plant Water Relations and Carbon Dynamics
- Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Global and Planetary Change › Forest Management and Policy
- Keywords
- forest resilience, forest fires, climate change, seedling density, moisture deficit, dry forest, forest conversion, Rocky Mountains, ecosystem services
- MeSH terms
- Wildfires, Fires, Trees, Climate Change, Forests
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
