The Scientific Value of Fire in Wilderness

Abstract

Wilderness areas are important natural laboratories for scientists and managers working to understand fire. In the last half-century, shifts in the culture and policy of land management agencies have facilitated the management practice of letting some naturally ignited fires burn, allowing fire to fulfill its ecological role and increasing the extent of fire-related research opportunities. With the goal of identifying the global scientific advances enabled by this paradigm shift in wilderness fire management, we conducted a systematic review of publications that either (1) selected protected areas for investigation because of an active fire regime enabled by wilderness fire management, (2) studied modern fires or fire regimes deliberately located in a wilderness area, or (3) conducted applied research to support wilderness fire management.

Citation

Kreider, M., Jaffe, M., Berkey, J., Parks, S. & Larson, A. The scientific value of fire in wilderness. Fire Ecology 19, 36 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s42408-023-00195-2.