Priority research directions for wildfire science: views from a historically fire-prone and an emerging fire-prone country

Fire regimes are changing across the globe, with new wildfire behaviour phenomena and increasing impacts felt, especially in ecosystems without clear adaptations to wildfire. These trends pose significant challenges to the scientific community in understanding and communicating these changes and their implications, particularly where we lack underlying scientific evidence to inform decision-making. Here, we present a perspective on priority directions for wildfire science research—through the lens of academic and government wildfire scientists from a historically wildfire-prone (USA) and emerging wildfire-prone (UK) country. Key topic areas outlined during a series of workshops in 2023 were as follows: (A) understanding and predicting fire occurrence, fire behaviour and fire impacts; (B) increasing human and ecosystem resilience to fire; and (C) understanding the atmospheric and climate impacts of fire. Participants agreed on focused research questions that were seen as priority scientific research gaps. Fire behaviour was identified as a central connecting theme that would allow critical advances to be made across all topic areas. These findings provide one group of perspectives to feed into a more transdisciplinary outline of wildfire research priorities across the diversity of knowledge bases and perspectives that are critical in addressing wildfire research challenges under changing fire regimes. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Novel fire regimes under climate changes and human influences: impacts, ecosystem responses and feedbacks’

Abnormal synaptic Ca2+ homeostasis and morphology in cortical neurons of familial hemiplegic migraine type 1 mutant mice

Paroxysmal Cerebral Disorder

Effects of competition, resource availability and invertebrates on tree seedling establishment

The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com1.We studied the establishment of tree seedlings in Mediterranean-type old fields in South Australia in different biotic environments and under different levels of resource availability. Specifically we wanted to: (a) test for a logarithmic relationship between the relative intensity of competition (RCI) and resource availability; (b) assess the potential of confounding resource competition with invertebrate herbivory; and (c) assess whether the architecture of the plant community had any qualitative or quantitative effects upon the relationship between resource availability and RCI. 2.Our glasshouse experiment showed that RCI increased with resource availability at low levels of resources, but not at higher levels, consistent with a logarithmic relationship. 3 The effects of resource competition and invertebrate herbivory were heavily confounded in the field experiment. 4 Plant architecture significantly affected the behaviour and abundance of invertebrates and we therefore conclude that it has the potential to modify the relationship between resource availability and competitive intensity. 5 Although the habitat templet/C-S-R model appears reasonably robust, modification of its general framework may be required because one of its basic underlying assumptions is most accurate when competition is defined phenomenologically.Brenton M. Ladd and Jose M. Facell