Kelsey Copes-Gerbitz

University of British Columbia - Vancouver | UBC · Department of Forest Sciences

Indigenous land stewardship and mixed‐severity fire regimes both promote landscape heterogeneity, and the relationship between them is an emerging area of research. In our study, we reconstructed the historical fire regime of Ne Sextsine, a 5900‐ha dry, Douglas‐fir‐dominated forest in the traditional territory of the T'exelc (Williams Lake First Na...

Fire regimes in North American forests are diverse and modern fire records are often too short to capture important patterns, trends, feedbacks, and drivers of variability. Tree‐ring fire scars provide valuable perspectives on fire regimes, including centuries‐long records of fire year, season, frequency, severity, and size. Here, we introduce the...

The dominant command and control fire governance paradigm is proven ineffective at coping with modern wildfire challenges. In response, jurisdictions globally are calling for transformative change that will facilitate coexisting with future fires. Enacting transformative change requires attention to historical governance attributes that may enable...

This article is part of the Resilience Pathways Report. The report has the following objectives: a) to share knowledge about existing practices and recent advances in understanding and managing disaster and climate risk in BC, including some information on relevant federal programs, and b) to provide insights on gaps and recommendations that will h...

Indigenous fire stewardship enhances ecosystem diversity, assists with the management of complex resources, and reduces wildfire risk by lessening fuel loads. Although Indigenous Peoples have maintained fire stewardship practices for millennia and continue to be keepers of fire knowledge, significant barriers exist for re-engaging in cultural burni...

Wildfires in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) are increasingly threatening lives and livelihoods. These growing impacts have prompted a paradigm shift toward proactive wildfire management that prioritizes prevention and preparedness instead of response. Despite this shift, many communities remain unprepared for wildfires in the WUI due to diverse...

With the growing challenge of addressing modern fire risk, land managers and researchers are increasingly looking to Indigenous knowledge as a primary source of information for enabling resilience of fire-dependent social-ecological systems (SES). Although this is an important step forward for recognizing the contribution of Indigenous peoples to f...

Worldwide, Indigenous peoples are leading the revitalization of their/our cultures through the restoration of ecosystems in which they are embedded, including in response to increasing ‘megafires’. Concurrently, growing Indigenous-led movements are calling for governments to implement Indigenous rights, titles and treaties, and many settler-colonia...

In the 2017 and 2018, 2.55 million hectares burned across British Columbia, Canada, including unanticipated large and high-severity fires in many dry forests. To transform forest and fire management to achieve resilience to future megafires requires improved understanding historical fire frequency, severity, and spatial patterns. Our dendroecologic...

Disturbances fundamentally alter ecosystem functions, yet predicting their impacts remains a key scientific challenge. While the study of disturbances is ubiquitous across many ecological disciplines, there is no agreed-upon, cross-disciplinary foundation for discussing or quantifying the complexity of disturbances, and no consistent terminology or...

The 2017 and 2018 record-breaking wildfire seasons in British Columbia highlighted the vulnerability of communities to large, intense wildfires. Today, fire-affected communities and landscapes throughout the province are still experiencing social, economic and ecological impacts. The COVID-19 pandemic has elevated the urgency of proactively address...

Widespread forest dieback is a phenomenon of global concern that requires an improved understanding of the relationship between tree growth and climate to support conservation efforts. One priority for conservation is the Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica), an endangered species exhibiting dieback throughout its North African range. In this study, we e...

Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana) habitat is a priority for conservation in the Pacific Northwest, with process-oriented management considered fundamental for the restoration of these ecosystems. Given that natural and anthropogenic processes operate across a wide spatial and temporal range, an historical perspective provides a more holistic unde...

We develop a 341-year Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana Dougl.) tree-ring chronology in Oregon’s Willamette Valley to evaluate climate-growth relationships and determine the species’ dendroclimatological potential at our site and in the surrounding region. The standardized and residual chronologies exhibit significant positive correlations with pr...