A wildfire, forest fire, bushfire, wildland fire or rural fire is an unplanned, uncontrolled and unpredictable fire in an area of combustible vegetation starting in rural and urban areas. Some forest ecosystems in their natural state depend on wildfire. Depending on the type of vegetation present, a wildfire can also be classified more specifically as a bushfire, desert fire, grass fire, hill fire, peat fire, prairie fire, vegetation fire, or veld fire. Wildfires are distinct from beneficial uses of fire, called controlled burns, though controlled burns can turn into wildfires.
Climate change has adversely affected both terrestrial and marine ecosystems, and is expected to further affect many ecosystems, including tundra, mangroves, coral reefs, caves etc. Increasing global temperature, more frequent occurrence of extreme weather, and rising sea level are among some of the effects of climate change that will have the most significant impact. Some of the possible consequences of these effects include species decline and extinction, change within ecosystems, increased prevalence of invasive species, a shift from forests being carbon sinks to carbon sources, ocean acidification, disruption of the water cycle, and increased occurrence of natural disasters, among others.
Wildfires can happen in many places in the United States, especially during droughts, but are most common in the Western United States and Florida. They may be triggered naturally, most commonly by lightning, or by human activity like unextinguished smoking materials, faulty electrical equipment, overheating automobiles, or arson.
Jacquelyn Gill is a paleoecologist and Assistant Professor of climate science at the University of Maine. She has worked on such as the relationship between megafauna and vegetation in the Pleistocene, and the sediment cores of Jamaica. Gill is also a science communicator on climate change.
Asmeret Asefaw Berhe is a soil biogeochemist and political ecologist who is the current Director of the Office of Science at the US Department of Energy. She was previously the Professor of Soil Biogeochemistry and the Ted and Jan Falasco Chair in Earth Sciences and Geology in the Department of Life and Environmental Sciences; University of California, Merced. Her research group worked to understand how soil helps regulate the earth's climate.
Yufang Jin is an assistant professor of remote sensing and ecosystem change at UC Davis's Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, and associate environmental scientist at the UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Her research uses satellite imaging and other techniques to track and model how landscapes and ecosystems change.
Dominique Bachelet is a senior climate change scientist and associate professor in Oregon State University, with over 38 years of education and work in the fields of climate change, fire, and ecology. She has worked to make science more accessible, by creating web based resources with various scientific organizations. She returned to Oregon State University in 2017 but has continued her outreach work, getting valuable information to students, scientists, and scholars.
Nancy B. Grimm is an American ecosystem ecologist and professor at Arizona State University. Grimm's substantial contributions to the understanding of urban and arid ecosystem biogeochemistry are recognized in her numerous awards. Grimm is an elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, Ecological Society of America, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Jill Johnstone was a professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Saskatchewan, where she started the Northern Plant Ecology Lab (NPEL) which she still runs. She primarily conducts research on plant ecology and environmental biology with an emphasis on how boreal forest and tundra are responding to rapid rates of climate change.
Abigail L. S. Swann is an Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences and Ecology at the University of Washington. Her research group focuses on questions that examine the interactions between plants and climate.
Elisabeth Holland is an American climate scientist who focuses on how the carbon and nitrogen cycles interact with earth systems. She has become a key player in the international climate debate. She is currently a professor of climate change at the University of the South Pacific. She is also the director of the Pacific Center for Environmental and Sustainable Development.
Paige Fischer is an environmental scientist from the Pacific Northwest whose research focuses mainly on the human dimensions of environmental changes. She is especially interested in forest ecology and conservation. She is currently an assistant professor at the University of Michigan's School for Environment and Sustainability, teaching upper level classes about analysis methods and social vulnerability to climate change.
Bronwen Konecky is a paleoclimatologist and climatologist whose particular area of focus lies in the past and present effect of climate change in the tropics. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
Susan G. Conard is an American scientist whose expertise focuses on wildland fires in Northern California and Taiga. During the 1980s and 1990s, Conard worked as a research and project leader for the United States Forest Service, publishing pieces on fire management and carbon sequestration. She is currently the editor for the International Journal of Wildland Fire.
Heidi Steltzer is a German-born American scientist of arctic and alpine ecology and professor at Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado teaching Biology and Environment and Sustainability. Steltzer is known for her work on snow melt and how it effects ecosystems in the surrounding areas.
Tania Schoennagel is an ecologist who specializes in wildfires and insect outbreaks. She is a research scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder and has been involved with INSTAAR since 2011.
Gregory P. Asner is an American ecologist whose global work has focused on ecosystems, conservation, and climate sciences. He has developed technology to access and analyze large amounts of data about ecosystems, including assessing carbon emissions, coral reef resilience, and biodiversity. He is the founder of the Global Airborne Observatory and the creator of Carnegie Landsat Analysis System (CLAS) and CLASlite. Since 2019, he has been the Director of Arizona State University's Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science. He is also managing director of the Allen Coral Atlas, an online map of all the coral reefs in the world used as a reference for reef conservation.
Holly René Barnard is an American geographer and Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. She studies how vegetation impacts the dynamics and pathways of streams. In 2020 Barnard was awarded a $7 million National Science Foundation grant to set up a Critical Zone Observatory at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Yude Pan is a senior research scientist with the Climate, Fire, and Carbon Cycle Sciences group of the Northern Research Station, USDA Forest Service, and a senior investigator of the Harvard Forest at Harvard University. Her work is in the fields of Ecosystem ecology and Global Change Biology. She studies terrestrial ecosystems and how environmental stressors affect complex interactions within those ecosystems. Much of her research focuses on forest ecosystems and how they relate to the carbon cycle as a whole, as well as forecasting complex effects of land use, climate change and air pollution on forest ecosystems.
Merritt Turetsky is American ecosystem ecologist who is a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. She serves as Director of the Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR). Her research considers fire regimes, climate change and biogeochemical cycling in Arctic wetlands. Turetsky is a member of the Permafrost Action Team (SEARCH), a group of scientists who translate and deliver science to decision-makers.
