Select Publications by Featured Experts

Stephen J. Pyne

Pyne, Stephen J. The Pyrocene: How We Created an Age of Fire, and What Happens Next. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021.

Pyne, Stephen J. Fire: A Brief History. second edition ed., Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019.

Pyne, Stephen J. Vestal Fire: An Environmental History, Told through Fire, of Europe and Europe’s Encounter with the World. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012.

Pyne, Stephen J. World Fire: The Culture of Fire on Earth. Pbk. ed. ed., Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2015.

Pyne, Stephen J. Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America. University of Arizona Press, 2015.

Frank K. Lake

Knight, C.A., Anderson, L., Bunting, M.J., Champagne, M., Clayburn, R.M., Crawford, J.N., Klimaszewski-Patterson, A., Knapp, E.E., Lake, F.K., Mensing, S.A. and Wahl, D., 2022. Land management explains major trends in forest structure and composition over the last millennium in California’s Klamath Mountains. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 119(12), p.e2116264119.

P.F. Hessburg, S.J. Prichard, R.K. Hagmann, N.A. Povak, F.K. Lake. Wildfire and climate change adaptation of western North American forests: a case for intentional management. Ecol. Appl. (2021), Article e02432.

Mucioki, Megan & Sowerwine, Jennifer & Sarna-Wojcicki, Daniel & Lake, Frank & Bourque, Shawn. (2021). Conceptualizing Indigenous Cultural Ecosystem Services (ICES) and Benefits under Changing Climate Conditions in the Klamath River Basin and Their Implications for Land Management and Governance. Journal of Ethnobiology. 41. 10.2993/0278-0771-41.3.313.

Marks-Block, T., Lake, F.K., Bliege Bird, R. et al. Revitalized Karuk and Yurok cultural burning to enhance California hazelnut for basketweaving in northwestern California, USA. fire ecol 17, 6 (2021).

Sowerwine, Jennifer & Sarna-Wojcicki, Daniel & Mucioki, Megan & Morehead-Hillman, Lisa & Lake, Frank & Friedman, Edith. (2019). Enhancing Food Sovereignty: A Five-year Collaborative Tribal-University Research and Extension Project in California and Oregon. Journal of Agriculture, Food Systems, and Community Development. 9. 1-24. 10.5304/jafscd.2019.09B.013.

Lake, Frank & Parrotta, John & Giardina, Christian & Davidson-Hunt, Iain & Uprety, Yadav. (2018). Integration of Traditional and Western knowledge in forest landscape restoration. 10.4324/9781315111872-12.

Marks-Block, Tony & Lake, Frank & Curran, Lisa. (2019). Effects of understory fire management treatments on California Hazelnut, an ecocultural resource of the Karuk and Yurok Indians in the Pacific Northwest. Forest Ecology and Management. 450. 117517. 10.1016/j.foreco.2019.117517.

Rossier, C.; Lake, F. 2014. Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge in agroforestry. Agroforestry Note 44, General 14. Lincoln, NE. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Washington Office Research and Development, National Agroforestry Center and U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resource Conservation Service. 8p.

Senos, R., F.K. Lake, N. Turner, and D. Martinez. 2006. Traditional ecological knowledge and restoration practice. In Restoring the Pacific Northwest: The art and science of ecological restoration in Cascadia, ed. D. Apostol and M. Sinclair, 393–426. Washington DC: Island Press.

Pacific Northwest Tribal Agroforestry Storymap

Deborah Landau

Ray, David & Landau, Deborah. (2019). Tree Mortality Following Mixed-Severity Prescribed Fire Dramatically Alters the Structure of a Developingv Pinus taeda Forest on the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain. Fire. 2. 25. 10.3390/fire2020025.

Emily Fairfax

Fairfax, E. and Whittle, A. (2020), Smokey the Beaver: beaver‐dammed riparian corridors stay green during wildfire throughout the western USA. Ecol Appl. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1002/eap.2225

Jordan and Fairfax. (2022), Beaver: the North American freshwater climate action plan. WIRES Water. doi: https://doi.org/10.1002/wat2.1592

References for Aboriginal Cultural Burning in Australia: Reflections after the Black Summer Fires

Personal Communication with Den Barber in Australia, via Zoom video chat. August 10, 2022.

Gammage, Bill. The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia. Allen and Unwin Publishers. Australia. 2011.

Steffensen, Victor. Fire Country: How Indigenous Fire Management Could Help Save Australia. Hardie Grant Travel, a division of Hardie Grant Publishers. Australia. 2020.

Ohana, Maela and Elena Cremona, Editors. theearthissue#4. The Dream of Tomorrow. 2020. EarthIssue:ArchiveCollectiveMagazine.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/blueprintforliving/living-with-country-den-barber-fire-yarrabin-koori-firesticks/13731768

https://www.discovermagazine.com/environment/following-two-years-after-australias-lethal-black-summer-fires

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-18/harnessing-australian-indigenous-fire-knowledge-worldwide/11878562

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/greatmomentsinscience/australian-bushfires-part-1/11898772

https://www.monash.edu/medicine/news/latest/2021-articles/black-summer-bushfires-of-2019-20-led-to-huge-health-burden-in-nsw-study-finds#:~:text=These%20Black%20Summer%20fires%2C%20as,land%20and%20killing%2034%20people.

https://theconversation.com/australias-black-summer-of-fire-was-not-normal-and-we-can-prove-it-172506

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fvets.2022.790556/full

https://naturaldisaster.royalcommission.gov.au/engagement

https://www.nsw.gov.au/nsw-government/projects-and-initiatives/nsw-bushfire-inquiry

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/07/kangaroo-island-bushfires-grave-fears-for-unique-wildlife-after-estimated-25000-koalas-killed

https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/homes-lost-after-firefighters-lose-control-of-mega-blaze-backburn-20191216-p53k98.html

https://www.dpc.nsw.gov.au/assets/dpc-nsw-gov-au/publications/NSW-Bushfire-Inquiry-1630/Final-Report-of-the-NSW-Bushfire-Inquiry.pdf

Other Publications

Dickson-Hoyle, S., Ignace, R. E., Ignace, M. B., Hagerman, S. M., Daniels, L. D., & Copes-Gerbitz, K. (2021). Walking on two legs: a pathway of Indigenous restoration and reconciliation in fire-adapted landscapes. Restoration Ecologyhttps://doi.org/10.1111/rec.13566

Hardesty, Jeff, Ron Myers, and Wendy Fulks. “Fire, Ecosystems, and People: A Preliminary Assessment of Fire as a Global Conservation Issue.” The George Wright Forum 22, no. 4 (2005): 78–87. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43597968.

Hoffman K. M., Davis E. L., Wickham S. B. et al. (2021) Conservation of Earth’s biodiversity is embedded in Indigenous fire stewardship. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, e2105073118.

Levy, Shannon 2022. Return of Intentional Forest Fires. BioScience 72 (4): 324-330, 17 March, 2022.

Myers, Ronald L. Living with Fire – Sustaining Ecosystems & Livelihoods Through Integrated Fire Management. Global Fire Initiative. June 2006 (The Nature Conservancy)

Changing the Face of the Forest: Does Logging Imitate Fire? (Written in the 1990s by biologist, environmental advocate, and Leaf Litter reader, Mike Pedde)

Organizations

Association for Fire Ecology

Cultural Fire Management Council

Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network

Fire Learning Network

Global Fire Partnership

Indigenous Peoples Burning Network

International Association of Wildland Fire

Joint Fire Science Program

LANDFIRE:  Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning Tools

Prescribed Fire Associations in the US

The Nature Conservancy Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges

Tall Timbers Research Station

Select Recent News Articles

How Indigenous Knowledge Reconnects Us All to Fire, Yes! September 20, 2022

Parks trying to return fire to national parks, Rocky Mountain Outlook, September 9, 2022

Op-Ed: Why forest managers need to team up with Indigenous fire practitioners, Los Angeles Times, July 7, 2022

Trailblazers: Women in Fire, The Nature Conservancy, June 24, 2022

Glossary

Backfire: Fire set along the inner edge of a fireline to consume fuel in the path of an existing wildfire. Operation is designed to change the direction of or slow down the existing wildfire by removing its fuel. (Source: Texas A&M Fire Service)

Brush Fire: Fire burning in vegetation that is predominantly shrubs, brush and scrub growth. (Source: Texas A&M Fire Service)

Burn Window: When the environmental conditions allow for a prescribed burn, a “window” of opportunity is referred to as the burn window or when the burn is in prescription. The burn window depends on many variables including the resource objectives, current and predicted weather, fuel moisture, personnel and equipment availability to carry out the burn, mop-up, and patrol. The most common burn windows occur outside of wildfire season in the spring and fall. When the objective is to reduce live vegetation such as grasslands and shrublands the prescribed burn is likely to take place in the fall prior to the wet season. When the main fuel to consume is timber litter or dead fuel the prescribed burn could take place in the winter or spring. Pile burning generally takes place when the vegetation around the pile is too wet to carry fire and mainly takes place during the fall/winter wet season. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Land Management)

Crown Fire: Movement of fire through the tops of trees and shrubs, usually independent of the surface fire. (Source: Texas A&M Fire Service)

Defensible Space: Natural or manmade area spanning at least 30 feet around a structure where combustible material has been cleared or removed, providing a barrier between you and an advancing wildfire (Source: Texas A&M Fire Service)

Drip Torch: Hand‐held device used to ignite fires by dripping flaming liquid torch fuel on the materials to be burned. Torch fuel generally is a mix of diesel and gasoline. (Source: Texas A&M Fire Service)

Fire Behavior: Manner in which a fire reacts to fuel, weather and topography. (Source: Texas A&M Fire Service)

Fire Dependent Species: Plant and animal species that are dependent on fire to survive. Lodgepole pine is an example; heat from the fire opens pine cones, allowing seeds to spread and naturally reforest an area. (Source: Texas A&M Fire Service)

Fireline: Linear fire barrier that is scraped or dug down to mineral soil — by hand or mechanically. More generally, the term “on the fireline” is used to describe working a fire. (Source: Texas A&M Fire Service)

Ladder Fuels: Vegetative fuel (small trees and shrubs) which provide vertical continuity between the ground surface and the forest canopy. These fuels can provide a ladder for the fire to reach the forest canopy. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Land Management)

Prescribed Fire: Prescribed fire (also called controlled burning) is an important tool that can be used to reduce the risk of large uncharacteristically severe wildfires, increase public and firefighter safety, as well as meet a variety of integrated natural resource management objectives. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Land Management)

Prescribed fire plan: A prescribed fire plan is required for each prescribed fire ignited by land management agencies. Burn plans are official site-specific implementation documents prepared by trained and qualified personnel, approved by the agency administrator and include criteria for the conditions under which the fire will be conducted to meet the resource objectives. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Land Management)

Surface fuels: Vegetative fuel on or near the ground surface, consisting of leaf and needle litter, grass, dead branch material, downed logs, bark, tree cones and low grown vegetation. (Source: U.S. Bureau of Land Management)

Got an idea?

Contact The Editor

Sign up for Leaf Litter

Browse by topic

Browse by year