Wildfires, Fuels & Invasive Plants

Severe wildfires have been burning more area and more houses in recent years. Some assert that climate change is at least partly to blame; others claim that the increasing number of homes in and near the forest is a major cause. However, most observers agree that wildfire suppression and historic land management practices have led to unnaturally high accumulations of biomass in many forests, primarily in the intermountain West. While high-intensity conflagrations (wildfires that burn the forest canopy) occur naturally in some ecosystems (called crown-fire or stand-replacement fire ecosystems), abnormally high biomass levels can lead to conflagrations in ecosystems when such crown fires were rare. This book explores wildland fires, fuels and non-native invasive plants in our forest ecosystems.