Fast fires burn more area, and more of that area is severely burned. What’s more, new research finds, severely burned patches will struggle to find seeds to regrow the same tree types. 🔥🧪🌍 eos.org/articles/fas...

Fast, Severe Wildfires Can Change How Forests Grow Back - Eos

These blazes can cause ecological shifts even in fire-adapted forests.

eos.org

Our new paper asks the question: is there any precedent for recent, high-severity fires that have removed >100,000 acres of forests from northern New Mexico? Based on the locations of trees that recorded surface fires over the prior 500 years, the answer is, statistically speaking, "not a chance".

GrumpyUncleSean🔥@grumpyunclesean.bsky.social · last mo.

1/5 New paper in PNAS led by Andreas Wion! 🔥🌍🧪 For centuries, dry-conifer forests in the western U.S. burned frequently, but mostly at low severity, meaning most trees were not killed by fire. Read on for details ...

Wildfires are getting so large and severe and summers so hot and dry that some forests just aren’t growing back after burning. Recent research suggests up to 40% of Western conifer forests could transition to grassland and shrubland by 2100, taking significant carbon storage with them.

Wildfires Are Turning Forests in the American West Into Shrubland (Gift Article)

Towering woodlands in the West are being permanently replaced by tracts of spiky shrubs. Conditions “just aren’t normal anymore,” one researcher said.

nytimes.com

Our new paper assesses relationships between wildfire rate of spread, area burned, and severity in western + boreal North American conifer forests 2012-2023. Take home message in the title: faster--> bigger--> more severe. With @grumpyunclesean.bsky.social, @jessforplanet.bsky.social and more! 🔥🧪🌍

Faster, bigger, more severe: Extreme wildfire spread sets the stage for forest ecosystem change in western and boreal North America

A relatively small number of rapidly spreading wildfire events burn disproportionately large areas. But beyond area burned, do fast fires produce distinct postfire ecological outcomes? Here, we measur...

science.org

A great illustration from NM today of how recent wildfire burn scars can contain new fires. This is why you want a mosaic of burn scars (prescribed and wildfire) on the landscape. So any new fire gets boxed in by the old ones.

Nice article from CBC featuring our recent research findings relating snowpack to fire severity. More important than how much area burns, is how it burns. 🔥🧪🌎 @grumpyunclesean.bsky.social www.cbc.ca/news/science...

Heat dome and snow melt could prime western U.S. for intense fire season | CBC Climate Change News

Mountains that normally see their peak snowpack in March are brown this year, thanks to a spring heat dome that baked western U.S. for much of the second half of the month. That's raising alarm bells ...

cbc.ca

NEW EPISODE of #FireEcology Chats! 🔥Alyssa Worsham and Jonathan Coop discuss how the right kind of fire can shrink the gap between existing and ideal conditions in U.S. wilderness areas #SNFECO Listen here: https://fireecology.org/feco-podcast/ep82

Some nice media exposure on our new paper published in @globalchangebio.bsky.social pertaining to expanding area burned by high severity wildfire. 🌍🔥 Thank you, @murphywoodhouse.bsky.social, for raising awareness about this important paper. Tagging bsky co-author @coopecology.bsky.social.

Murphy Woodhouse@murphywoodhouse.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Took me forever, but finally got my spot on @grumpyunclesean.bsky.social's latest paper up. Worth a read if you care about fire. www.boisestatepublicradio.org/environment/...

Postfire landscapes of the 2025 Deer Creek fire, Colorado-Utah border, USA.

I wrote an op-ed on the world-class STEM research ecosystem in the United States, and how this ecosystem is now under attack on multiple fronts by the current administration: newsletter.ofthebrave.org/p/im-an-awar...

I’m an award-winning mathematician. Trump just cut my funding.

The “Mozart of Math” tried to stay out of politics. Then it came for his research.

newsletter.ofthebrave.org

Though this is not a tree-ring fire scar, for #firescarfriday here is an interesting pic of landscape burn severity patterns from the 2025 Rabbit Creek Fire (DA-007) in the Yukon Territory.

Our new research highlights the extent that aspen stands may act as a firebreak, slowing or stopping fire. Applications for land management and implications for fire-driven conifer-to-aspen forest conversion. Thanks @grumpyunclesean.bsky.social for the summary below. doi.org/10.1002/eap....

GrumpyUncleSean🔥@grumpyunclesean.bsky.social · last yr.

1/4 Our research team just published a new paper: "Aspen impedes wildland fire spread in southwestern United States landscapes". Aspen forests are thought to be more resistant to burning compared to conifer forests, but this has not been well studied. 🧪🔥

This would be the largest public lands sell-off in modern U.S. history and it's happening with no hearings, no debate, and no public input. See what public lands would be available for sale: www.wilderness.org/articles/med...

120 million acres of public lands eligible for sale in SENR budget reconciliation package

The bill mandates disposal of over 2 million acres of BLM and National Forest lands; public lands eligible for sale in the bill encompass over 120 million acres, including local recreation areas, wild...

wilderness.org

It’s finally in writing. The detailed President’s budget clearly wants to completely eliminate USFS Research

Why do fire scars form more on the leeward or uphill sides of trees? For #firescarfriday here's a little time lapse video showing the increased residence time of flame, and thus increased heating and potential cambial injury, in the eddy of air in the lee of this long leaf pine. Florida, USA, 2025.

End Product Of The Mo Salah Selfie 🤳😍

See Trump's damage to science one scientist at a time at @silencedscience.bsky.social 🧪

mountainjournal.org/white-house-...

Draft National Wildfire Plan Under White House Consideration Returns Firefighting ‘to the 1930s,’ Experts Say

On the cusp of wildfire season, a new proposal recommends consolidating all federal firefighting resources, calls for immediate fire suppression.

mountainjournal.org

Hands off Gunnison Colorado! #handsoff

Flaming fire scars at the base of a longleaf pine (Pinus palustris) in the Red Hills of Florida USA. 04/02/25. Interesting how intensely these can burn once they get going. #firescarfriday

"Trump’s economic plans are incoherent and incomprehensible at least partially by design. The goal, by this longtime scam artist, is to bamboozle the American people and take their money."

MAGA's Big Lie budget

Trump’s economic agenda is about fooling the American people.

publicnotice.co

TODAY IS THE DAY! 🧪☀️⬇️ Join us at the Lincoln Memorial or your local site to Stand Up for Science!

Wherever you are today, join us as we STAND UP FOR SCIENCE! For CO folks - events in Denver (1-4), as well as at noon in Boulder, Fort Collins, and Golden. Find your location info here: standupforscience2025.org/local-event-... If you can’t make an event, don’t fret—stand up loud at noon!

Stand Up for Science!@standupforscience.net · 2y ago

TODAY IS THE DAY! 🧪☀️⬇️ Join us at the Lincoln Memorial or your local site to Stand Up for Science!

Faster burning fires not only burn disproportionately large areas, but they also burn more severely. Extreme fire spread events (just the top 3%) accounted for a third of the total area burned, but half of the total area burned at high severity--setting the stage for long-term forest loss. 🧪🌎🔥

GrumpyUncleSean🔥@grumpyunclesean.bsky.social · 2y ago

1/n Our team just published a new paper in Global Change Biology 🧪🔥 The title succinctly describes the main take home message, but here's the deal: We produced gridded, fine-scale (resolution = 30m) daily fire progression maps for 623 wildfires in the SW US using satellite fire data. read on ...

To sum it up, the president ordered water released for fires in LA with water that doesn’t reach LA, at volumes that could cause communities to flood, and in the wrong season for irrigating crops, which will then mean less water for irrigating crops in the summer when it’s actually needed.

Shel Winkley@shelwinkleywx.bsky.social · 2y ago

"This is the wrong time of year to be releasing water from reservoirs...This is going to hurt farmers," Vink said. “This takes water out of their summer irrigation portfolio.” www.latimes.com/environment/...

Turns out the 2010 America COMPETES Act contains language I recognize because I've cribbed it from NSF's Grant Proposal Guide for every proposal I've sent to NSF www.congress.gov/111/plaws/pu... It's encoded in 42 USC 1826p-14 uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?r... R: the 2010 Act, L: the GPG

Jeremy Yoder says no war@jbyoder.org · 2y ago

I genuinely did not know this! And if NSF's mandate to diversify the scientific workforce comes from Congress, it is fully unconstitutional to overturn that mandate by executive order without an act of Congress

Who has good examples of their university leaders providing strong messaging and support for students, staff, and faculty at this time? I'd love this thread to become a space where we can provide models of how to not be a coward.

In my ongoing effort to better understand our terrible relationship with fire, and what a better one might look like, the Karuk have figured prominently. Here's my report from N. California on the inspiring things happening on their ancestral territory. www.boisestatepublicradio.org/environment/...

In northern California, the Karuk Tribe is burning its way back to a centuries-old relationship with fire

The Karuk of Northern California are one of many Native peoples with a long tradition of burning their ancestral lands. These practices are key inspiration for an annual prescribed fire training that’...

boisestatepublicradio.org