2nd Fire Webinar

Effects of Fire on Biodiversity

Join us for a journey through the effects of fire on ecology and diversity in the Arizona Sky Islands, the South American savanna, and north-central Appalachia. Fire is an important driver of community and landscape change and contributes to changes in biological diversity. Historical fire regimes vary across ecosystems, and it has been suggested that consideration of historical fire regimes improves our ability to anticipate effects of disturbance on ecological communities. Fire may occur frequently as an important contributor to ecosystem health while in other systems, fires were historically rare or even absent. In recent decades we have seen an increase in fire occurrence globally because of a warming climate where more areas become available to burn. Increased human population pressure, altering ecology and igniting or suppressing fires, and invasive species are other drivers of changing fire regimes. In this webinar we discuss effects of fire on diversity and address ecological concepts developed to generalize relationships between fire effects and biodiversity, including several diversity measures, the pyro-diversity concept, and the Intermediate Disturbance Hypothesis (IDH). At the end of the webinar we invite questions from the audience and discuss future research directions related to effects of fire on biodiversity.

Date: 30 August 2022

Time: 9:00pm CEST | 3:00pm EDT | 3:00am CST Asia | 12:00pm PDT

Webinar ID: 836 4255 4869

Webinar Secretariat: fire.webinar@mdpi.com