Fire is an important agent of change in ecosystems all over the world. However, because of fire suppression, land development, and global warming, humans have changed the nature of how fires burn. Now, in some parts of the world, fires burn bigger and hotter than they used to, and this poses new challenges for both people and for wildlife that are not adapted to these new fire regimes. We conduct research on wildlife responses to fire, and also wildlife responses to forest management actions that are intended to reduce fire severity (e.g., tree thinning) and increase ecosystem resilience.

Example publication

Jones, G. M., M. A. Clément, C. E. Latimer, M. E. Wright, J. S. Sanderlin, S. J. Hedwall, R. Kirby (2024) Frequent burning and limited stand-replacing fire supports Mexican spotted owl pair occupancy. Fire Ecology 20: 37. 

Our world is changing rapidly. Fire, drought, climate change, and human development are transforming landscapes and the ecological processes that sustain them. Rather than simply protecting existing conditions, conservation must account for the dynamics that create and maintain habitat over time. Using spatial modeling, remote sensing, and other quantitative approaches, we develop ‘living maps’ that track changing wildlife habitat, helping managers understand how disturbance and management reshape landscapes and where suitable conditions may emerge. This dynamic approach provides the information needed to conserve not just landscapes, but the processes that sustain them.

Example publication

Jones, G. M., C. Thompson, S. C. Sawyer, K. E. Norman, S. A. Parks, T. M. Hayes, D. L. Hankins (2025) Conserving landscape dynamics, not just landscapes. BioScience 75: 409–415.

Several fundamental ecological hypotheses predict that biodiversity will be maximized in landscapes with greater environmental heterogeneity, because greater heterogeneity offers a broader breadth of niches for different species to occupy. Fire is a major driver of landscape variation, and therefore, a prediction has emerged that areas experiencing greater “pyrodiversity” (that is, greater heterogeneity in burn characteristics) will support higher biodiversity. Our work seeks to understand the mechanisms underlying the pyrodiversity-biodiversity hypothesis and its implications for conservation and fire management.

Example publication

Jones, G. M. and M. W. Tingley (2022) Pyrodiversity and biodiversity: a history, synthesis, and outlook. Diversity and Distributions 28: 386-403.

Fire is a major selective force in terrestrial ecosystems, and life on Earth has accumulated adaptations to survive fires and persist in burned landscapes. In plants, such traits are widely known – such as thick bark, serotiny, vegetative re-sprouting, etc. However, in animals, fire adaptations are less understood. Our work seeks to understand the breadth of fire adaptations in animal life, how rapidly changing fire regimes may influence evolution, and the implications of fire-driven evolution for conservation.

Example publication

Jones, G. M., J. Goldberg, T. Wilcox, L. Buckley, C. L. Parr, E. B. Linck, E. D. Fountain, M. K. Schwartz (2023) Fire-driven animal evolution in the Pyrocene. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 38: 1072-1084.

The way that animals move across landscapes gives us information about what environmental features are important to them. With emerging high-resolution GPS technologies, our ability to discern fine-grained movements by animals can help us better understand their spatial habitat ecology and inform targeted land management for conservation. We use animal movement models (e.g. resource- and step-selection functions) to understand the role of individual variation, landscape configuration, and environmental gradients in mediating resource selection by animals.

Example publication

Jones, G. M., D. S. Reid, C. J. Zulla, J. Williams, S. J. Hedwall, R. Kirby (2025) Mexican spotted owls use forest mosaics affected by timber harvest, insects, and wildfire. Southwestern Naturalist 69: 1-8.