Fire has been a part of natural ecosystems for many millennia. The species of those ecosystems have evolved through a series of “coarse filters,” one of which is resistance or resilience to disturbance by fire. Plant adaptations to fire include the ability to sprout, seed bank adaptations in the soil or canopy, high dispersal ability for seeds, and thick bark. These adaptations are often to a particular fire regime, or combination of fire frequency, intensity, extent, and season. Fire can be used by managers to achieve species to ecosystem-level conservation biology objectives. Examples using prescribed fire include the grasslands of the Puget Trough of Washington State, maintenance of oak woodlands, and perpetuation of ponderosa pine/mixed-conifer forests.

Here, we present two high-resolution records of macroscopic charcoal from high-elevation lake sites in the Sierra Nevada, California, and evaluate the synchroneity of fire response for east- and west-side subalpine forests during the past 9200 yr. Charcoal influx was low between 11,200 and 8000 cal yr BP when vegetation consisted of sparse Pinus-dominated forest and montane chaparral shrubs. High charcoal influx after 8000 cal yr BP marks the arrival of Tsuga mertensiana and Abies magnifica, and a higher-than-present treeline that persisted into the mid-Holocene. Coeval decreases in fire episode frequency coincide with neoglacial advances and lower treeline in the Sierra Nevada after 3800 cal yr BP. Independent fire response occurs between 9200 and 5000 cal yr BP, and significant synchrony at 100- to 1000-yr timescales emerges between 5000 cal yr BP and the present, especially during the last 2500 yr. Indistinguishable fire-return interval distributions and synchronous fires show that climatic control of fire became increasingly important during the late Holocene. Fires after 1200 cal yr BP are often synchronous and corroborate with inferred droughts. Holocene fire activity in the high Sierra Nevada is driven by changes in climate linked to insolation and appears to be sensitive to the dynamics of the El Niño–Southern Oscillation.

The valley floor of a 33.9 km2 watershed in western Colorado experienced gradual sedimentation from before ∼ 6765 to ∼ 500 cal yr BP followed by deep incision, renewed aggradation, and secondary incision. In contrast, at least four terraces and widespread cut-and-fill architecture in the valley floor downstream indicate multiple episodes of incision and deposition occurred during the same time interval. The upper valley fill history is atypical compared to other drainages in the Colorado Plateau.

One possible reason for these differences is that a bedrock canyon between the upper and lower valley prevented headward erosion from reaching the upper valley fill. Another possibility is that widespread, sand-rich, clay-poor lithologies in the upper drainage limited surface runoff and generally favored alluviation, whereas more clay-rich lithologies in the lower drainage resulted in increased surface runoff and more frequent incision. Twenty-two dates from valley fill charcoal indicate an approximate forest fire recurrence interval of several hundred years, similar to that from other studies in juniper–piñon woodlands. Results show that closely spaced vertical sampling of alluvium in headwater valleys where linkages between hillslope processes and fluvial activity are relatively direct can provide insight about the role of fires in alluvial chronologies of semi-arid watersheds.

Adaptation to the consequences of climate change has developed into a growing field of concern for the insurance business. However, climate-related risk is not entirely a new field in insurance. Historically, a large number of insurance organisational choices and strategies have been used to mitigate the financial impact of extreme events and uncertainties associated with climate change. Taking the case of forests in Sweden, this article reviews the ways in which climate-related risks such as storm/wind and fire risks have been assured. The study shows that climate-related risks have generally increased over time and that major hazard events have been decisive for strategy and organisation choices. Twentieth-century developments show that corporate insurance coverage increased due to higher levels of anticipated risk, while self-insurance and public insurance were reduced. However, in more recent times the expansion of corporate insurance has stagnated. Increased premiums and tighter terms following historically extreme weather events have led government and forest owners to assume more climate risks.

Tirat Carmel Mental Health Center was successfully evacuated in December 2010 during a ravaging forest fire in the nearby Carmel Mountains. A total of 228 patients were successfully evacuated from the center within 45 minutes. No fatalities or injuries associated with the evacuation occurred. We believe that the efficient functioning of the administrative and medical staff provides a replicable model that can contribute to the level of awareness and readiness of hospital staff members for natural and manmade disasters. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2014;0:1-5)

Fires can significantly affect the structure, floristic composition and biomass content of tropical forests, which are not adapted to this disturbance. To assess the impact of understorey fires on above-ground biomass, this study was conducted in the northern Brazilian Amazon (Roraima state), where uncontrolled forest fires are recurrent. Fifty plots (0.25 ha each) distributed across five fire disturbance classes were inventoried. Losses in biomass stocks were significant (−57% and −63%) for forests that suffered from recurrent fires and progressively occurred until some point between 3 and 7 y after the last fire, as deduced from previous studies. Twelve years after a fire event, biomass stocks were reconstituted, although differences in the floristic composition were associated with greater fire severity, particularly driven by the dominance of the Cecropia spp. In thrice-burned forests, live biomass reached levels of secondary forests of the same region. For large trees (> 50 cm dbh), the reduction (−54%) in biomass was significant in thrice-burned areas. These findings highlight the threat that fires represent for tropical rain forests and emphasise the need for long-term surveys in order to distinguish between the effects of fire severity, fire frequency and time-since-fire artefact.

Nonspatial stochastic models of populations subject to catastrophic events result in the common conclusion that the survival probability of the population is nondecreasing with respect to the random number of individuals removed at each catastrophe. The purpose of this paper is to prove that such a monotonic relationship is not true for simple spatial models based on Harris' contact processes, whose dynamics are described by hypergraph structures rather than traditional graph structures. More precisely, it is proved that, for a wide range of parameters, the destruction of (infinite) hyperplanes does not affect the existence of a nontrivial invariant measure, whereas the destruction of large (finite) cubes drives the population to extinction, a result that we depict by using the biological picture: forest fires are more devastating than tornadoes. This indicates that the geometry of the subsets struck by catastrophes is somewhat more important than their area, thus the need to consider spatial rather than nonspatial models in this context.

Agroclimatology represents the link between several agrometeorological fields and climatological applications. The German Weather Service (DWD) uses data from many meteorological stations for 40-year calculations by agrometeorological models. The topics extend from microclimatic elements over the wide field of soil conditions and water content, agricultural operations and product quality to forest fires and plant pests. Analyses of agroclimatic output allow for better planning, risk assessment, objective evaluation of the current situation and even for a test of the models used. Current applications concern crop microclimate, including soil, evapotranspiration and volatilisation, plant protection, phenology and product quality, with examples such as the frequency of extreme soil frost, optimum harvest conditions, plant water stress on different soils, and the frequency of high pest incidence. Not only singular places, but regions too can be evaluated. Results from combinations of elements, such as soil frozen with high water content, are considered valuable for recommendations to agricultural users. Agroclimatic model information concerning, for example, removal of plastic cover from spring crops, soil conditions for plant water use, tractability, herbicide effectiveness, germination, nutrient washout, and harvest, is directly usable by farmers. The information about forest fire index, extreme season assessment (for compensation payments), and trend analyses is of practical use for administration. The use of risk levels for plant pathogens is important both for farmers and extension services. The future importance of agroclimatic applications is considered high.