Forest fires: Behavior and ecological effects

• Edward A. Johnson
• Kiyoko Miyanishi

Abstract
A major problem in fire ecology has been the lack of understanding of fire behavior in any serious way by ecologists. A good proportion of papers in fire ecology give only cursory descriptions of the fire and seem always to lack any physical understanding of how fires affect individuals and populations. In recognition of this deficiency, we have put together a book to be published by Academic Press whose intention is to bridge the gap between those who work on the physical and chemical processes of fire behavior and ecologists who are interested in the ecological effects of fire. In order for a book of this sort to be successful, we feel a workshop is necessary in which the individual chapters are discussed and improved by interaction between the fire behavior specialists, ecologists and resource managers. The resulting book will, for the first time we hope, provide a text which introduces foresters, ecologists, and resource managers to the contemporary understanding of fire behavior and explain how this understanding can be used to study ecological effects. We know of no other text, published or planned, that has this goal. We expect the text to potentially result in a major shift in research approaches taken by foresters and ecologists as well as in the kind of information that resource managers will require from fire researchers.