Forest Health Research Program Grantee Webinar: Climate change and wildfires in western North American forests: a review of ecological departures and adaptation strategies

This presentation will summarize a literature review conducted by a team of scientists from across western North America on the topic of climate change and western wildfires. Rapid climate change is bringing warmer, drier, longer wildfire seasons to our region. In fire-dependent forests, these wildfires are burning in fuels that built up during more than a century of policies that favored fire exclusion. Consequently, wildfires have been increasing in severity and area-burned. We focused our review around ten common questions about adaptive forest management and how it can be used to assist climate and wildfire adaptation. The first of these questions addressed how fire exclusion transformed western forests and left them more vulnerable to drought, insects and disease agents, and wildfires.

Susan Prichard, fire ecologist with the University of Washington School of Environmental and Forest Sciences (UW SEFS), studies the effects of fire, climate change, and other disturbances on forest ecosystems and fuel treatment options to mitigate the impacts of those disturbances. Keala Hagmann, research ecologist affiliated with UW SEFS, has used historical forest and landscape conditions to inform contemporary management.