Extreme prescribed fire during drought reduces survival and density of woody resprouters

Management intervention in ecosystems with degraded environmental services requires innovative resource management strategies that go beyond conventional restoration and conservation practices. We established a unique study that experimentally targeted extreme fire conditions during drought in humid subtropical and semiarid ecoregions. In the southern Great Plains of North America, conventional restoration and conservation practices have been either historically ineffective or economically cost prohibitive at restoring grass-dominated ecosystems following conversion to resprouting shrublands. Our aim was to assess the potential for extreme fire during drought to force the system along an alternate ecological trajectory from its current progression toward closed-canopy resprouting shrubland, something conventional fire prescriptions have been unable to accomplish. We first tested the potential for high intensity fires exhibiting extreme behaviour to disrupt the progression from grassla...