Fire-adapted forested ecosystems in the Southwest evolved with a continual flux of downed woody materiala structural component that is considered essential to a properly functioning forest ecosystem. The creation and accumulation of downed woody material depends on forest type, tree species, stage of succession/decay, the amount of insect and disease activity, climate, fire return intervals, windthrow, and management activities. In general, more downed woody material accumulates in forests with long fire return intervals (subalpine, mixed conifer, pinyon-juniper woodlands) than in forests with short fire return intervals, such as ponderosa pine. While early foresters saw downed woody material as waste, a potential source of insect and disease problems or a wildfire hazard, todays foresters and researchers have identified the large-size component of downed woody material.

This edited volume presents original scientific research and knowledge synthesis covering the past, present, and potential future fire ecology of major US forest types, with implications for forest management in a changing climate. The editors and authors highlight broad patterns among ecoregions and forest types, as well as detailed information for individual ecoregions, for fire frequencies and severities, fire effects on tree mortality and regeneration, and levels of fire-dependency by plant and animal communities. The foreword addresses emerging ecological and fire management challenges for forests, in relation to sustainable development goals as highlighted in recent government reports. An introductory chapter highlights patterns of variation in frequencies, severities, scales, and spatial patterns of fire across ecoregions and among forested ecosystems across the US in relation to climate, fuels, topography and soils, ignition sources (lightning or anthropogenic), and vegetation. Separate chapters by respected experts delve into the fire ecology of major forest types within US ecoregions, with a focus on the level of plant and animal fire-dependency, and the role of fire in maintaining forest composition and structure. The regional chapters also include discussion of historic natural (lightning-ignited) and anthropogenic (Native American; settlers) fire regimes, current fire regimes as influenced by recent decades of fire suppression and land use history, and fire management in relation to ecosystem integrity and restoration, wildfire threat, and climate change. The summary chapter combines the major points of each chapter, in a synthesis of US-wide fire ecology and forest management into the future. This book provides current, organized, readily accessible information for the conservation community, land managers, scientists, students and educators, and others interested in how fire behavior and effects on structure and composition differ among ecoregions and forest types, and what that means for forest management today and in the future.

This conference was meant to facilitate the development of mutually beneficial human-wildland interactions by exploring ways in which to restore and sustain land health, as well as that of dependent human communities, in an adaptive ecosystem management context. General adaptive ecosystem restoration and management principles were discussed, however the conference was specifically designed to encourage cooperative North American work. The primary focus was on long-needled pine (principally ponderosa and closely related pines) and mixed-conifer landscape systems in the Western U.S.