Reburns in Alaska
The goals of our project were to:
1) incorporate field studies and model simulations to determine how fire frequency and climate change affect shifts between vegetation types (e.g. switch from conifer to hardwoods) and long term carbon storage in this vast and under-studied region.
Scroll down to see a list of publications from the project
2) train graduate students and teach at ASRA (Alaskan Summer Research Academy, https://www.uaf.edu/asra/), a camp for middle school students held in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Click here to learn more about our outreach
3) The investigators will also collaborate with ScienceLIVE (https://www.lessonsinlifescience.org/), a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a stronger relationship between science and the community by bridging the gap between scientists and K-12 students through video-based lesson plans.
Click here to learn more about our outreach
Melissa Lucash and Shelby Weiss
Funded by the National Science Foundation, 2018- 2022
Investigators outside UO included:
Dr. Brian Buma, Environmental Defense Fund
Dr. Tim Link, University of Idaho
Dr. Vladimir Romanovsky, University of Alaska Fairbanks, retired
Dr. Jason Vogel, University of Florida
Dr. Dmitry Nicolsky, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Dr. Robert Scheller, North Carolina State University
Adrienne Marshall, Colorado School of Mines
Dr. Jason Shabaga, University of Colorado Boulder
Kate Hayes, Cary Institute, NY
Shelby Weiss, Great Rivers, MO
Publications from this project, as of 6.27.25
Weiss, SA, AM Marshall, KR Hayes, DM Nicolsky, B Buma and MS Lucash. 2023. Future transitions from a conifer to a deciduous-dominated landscape are accelerated by greater wildfire activity and climate change in interior Alaska. Landsc Ecol 38, 2569–2589 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10980-023-01733-8
Lucash, MS, AM Marshall, SA Weiss, JW McNabb, DJ Nicolsky, G Flerchinger, TE Link, JG Vogel, RM Scheller, RZ Abramoff, and VE Romanovsky. 2023. Burning trees in frozen soil: Simulating fire, vegetation, soil, and hydrology in the boreal forests of Alaska. Ecological Modelling 481, 110367. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304380023000959
Shabaga, JA, R Bracho, PA Klockow, MS Lucash and JG Vogel 2022. Shortened fire intervals stimulate carbon losses from heterotrophic respiration and reduce understorey plant productivity in boreal forests. Ecosystems. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10021-022-00761-w
Buma, B, K Hayes, S Weiss and M Lucash. 2022. Short-interval fires increasing in the Alaskan boreal forest as fire self-regulation decays across forest types. Scientific Reports 12: 4901. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-08912-8
Marshall, AM, TE Link, GN Flerchinger, & MS Lucash. 2021. Importance of parameter and climate data uncertainty for future changes in boreal hydrology. Water Resources Research 57: e2021WR029911, https://doi. org/10.1029/2021WR029911
Marshall, AM, TE Link, GN Flerchinger, DJ Nicolsky and MS Lucash. 2021. Ecohydrological modeling in a deciduous boreal forest: Model evaluation for application in non-stationary climates. Hydrological Processes 35( 6), e14251. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/hyp.14251
Buma B, SA Weiss, K Hayes and MS Lucash. 2020. Wildland fire reburning trends across the US West suggest only short-term negative feedback and differing climatic effects. Environmental Research Letters 15(3): 034026. doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab6c70
Hayes, K., and B. Buma. 2021. Effects of short-interval disturbances continue to accumulate, overwhelming variability in local resilience. Ecosphere 12(3):e03379. 10.1002/ecs2.3379