About

Brian J. Harvey is an Associate Professor at the School of Environmental and Forest Sciences at the University of Washington, holding the Jack and George Corkery Professorship in Forest Sciences. His research primarily focuses on understanding how forest fires and forest resilience to fire are changing as the climate warms. He investigates the patterns and drivers of forest fires, how forest structure and function are shaped by fires, and the interactions among fire and other disturbances such as insect outbreaks, within the context of climate change. Dr. Harvey emphasizes field studies integrated with large spatial datasets and analyses, drawing insights from landscape ecology, fire ecology, disturbance ecology, and community ecology in forest ecosystems. Over the past 15 years, his research has concentrated on the fire ecology of forests in coastal California, the US Rocky Mountains, and the Pacific Northwest.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Sociology
• Social Science
• Ecology
• Environmental resource management
• Natural resource economics
• Economics
• Environmental ethics
• Environmental planning
• Business
• Agroforestry
• Biology
• Engineering
• Geography
• Civil engineering

Selected publications

• Right on Time: Evaluating Accuracy and Timing of Burn-Severity Assessments to Support Post-Fire Response

  Research Square · 2026-05-05

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Extremely large fires shape fire severity patterns across the diverse forests of British Columbia, Canada

  Ecosphere · 2025-08-01 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Warming and drying conditions are driving increases in wildfire size and annual area burned across the forests of British Columbia, Canada. The impact of increasing fire activity on these forests remains unclear as examination of concurrent changes to fire severity is lacking. Here, we assess how fire severity patterns change with the amplification of wildfire size across the bioregions of British Columbia using fire severity mapping from 1986 to 2021. First, we examine trends in extremely large fires (i.e., largest 5% of fires) and their influence on annual area burned; then we examine scaling relationships between wildfire size and fire severity to determine if extremely large fires are more severe than smaller fires. Extremely large fires explained much of the variation in annual area burned and accounted for a large proportion of cumulative area burned (33%–71%) across the study area. Consequently, shifts in the size of extremely large fires, which increased by an order of magnitude over our study period, have driven a substantial increase in annual area burned. Scaling relationships revealed that bigger wildfires consisted of larger and more homogenous patches of high‐severity fire than smaller fires, resulting in a greater proportional contribution of high‐severity fire to fire extent. Patterns in scaling relationships were qualitatively similar for all bioregions, indicating shifts in fire regimes are widespread across the province. Our results demonstrate that recent increases in the extremes of wildfire size across the forests of British Columbia have driven a sharp increase in area burned, which was associated with a disproportionate increase in the size and extent of patches of high‐severity fire.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Actionable fire science can empower decision makers in a more fiery future

  2025-04-28

  preprintOpen access

  Wildfire activity is increasing across the western United States, causing a social-ecological crisis. Researchers and managers have partnered to make tremendous progress toward more actionable wildfire science that informs strategies. However, environmental change is accelerating, information needs are emerging, and the current presidential administration threatens the hard-earned capacity of research and management communities. Here, we (1) summarize two decades of research effort that supported management of wildfires before the current presidential administration, (2) highlight pressing research gaps that remain barriers to effective wildfire management, and (3) chart steps that could foster a new era of actionable wildfire science. The time to act is now. Opportunities to address key knowledge gaps abound, if researchers, remaining federal resource managers, state governments, US Congress, Tribes, philanthropists, and the private sector partner in a moonshot investment of research and innovation that spans from foundational to co-produced science and embraces multiple ways of knowing.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Perspectives: Six opportunities to improve understanding of fuel treatment longevity in historically frequent-fire forests

  Forest Ecology and Management · 2025-05-28 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Fuel-reduction and restoration treatments (“treatments”) are conducted extensively in dry and historically frequent-fire forests of interior western North America (“dry forests”) to reduce potential for uncharacteristically severe wildfire. However, limited understanding of treatment longevity and long-term treatment effects creates potential for inefficient treatment maintenance and inaccurate forecasting of wildfire behavior. In this perspectives paper, we briefly summarize current understanding of long-term effects of three common treatment types (burn-only, thin-only, and thin-plus-burn) in dry forests. We then propose six opportunities for future research: evaluate treatment longevity in the context of management goals and long-term treatment effects, reference departure from un-treated conditions and progress toward desired conditions, account for natural variance of dry forests and associated statistical challenges, explore within-treatment drivers of long-term responses, increase the frequency of post-treatment sampling, and incorporate spatial heterogeneity into long-term analyses. Integrating these opportunities into long-term treatment studies and adaptive management plans can improve treatment maintenance efficiency and wildfire modelling. Ultimately, improved understanding about long-term effects of treatment and treatment longevity can support climate-adaptive management that increases dry-forest resilience to wildfire. • Limited understanding of fuel treatment longevity hinders treatment maintenance planning. • We propose six opportunities to improve understanding of fuel treatment longevity. • We visually depict short- and long-term effects of three treatment types.

  PublisherDOI

• Patterns and drivers of biotic disturbance hotspots in western United States coniferous forests

  Ecography · 2025-07-03

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Globally, forest disturbances caused by herbivorous insects and plant pathogens (i.e. biotic disturbances) have increased since the 1990s, a trend linked in part to climate warming. With increases in biotic disturbance activity, an emerging ecological phenomenon has been documented: biotic disturbance ‘hotspots', or areas where two or more biotic disturbance agents co‐occur in space and time. Biotic disturbance hotspots may have important implications for forest resilience, particularly if they erode mechanisms of post‐disturbance forest recovery. The factors leading to hotspot occurrence, however, remain poorly understood. We characterized the patterns and drivers of biotic disturbance hotspots occurring from 2000 to 2020 across three broad forested regions in the western United States (US; the Southern Rockies, Middle Rockies, and Cascades). Using Bayesian spatio‐temporal models, we evaluated whether hotspots can be predicted from predisposing factors expected to increase forest susceptibility to biotic disturbance (i.e. forest composition, topography, and average climate), as well as inciting factors known to trigger individual bark beetle and pathogen outbreaks (i.e. annual weather). Biotic disturbance hotspots exhibited distinct spatio‐temporal patterns and trends within each region. Forest structure and composition were the strongest and most consistent drivers of hotspots. Other factors varied in their importance by region, reflecting regional differences in biophysical context. Relative to the predictor variables included in our models, estimated spatio‐temporal random effects were more closely correlated with model predictions, suggesting that dynamic factors such as outbreak spread strongly shape patterns of biotic disturbance hotspots. Our results illustrate the widespread nature of biotic disturbance hotspots across western US coniferous forests and demonstrate the importance of forest structure and regional outbreak dynamics in anticipating hotspots at regional scales. These findings provide a deeper understanding of interacting forest disturbances and have important implications for the resilience of forests during a period marked by continued increases in disturbance activity.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Climate Change Effects on Interacting Disturbances in Forest Ecosystems

  Annual Review of Ecology Evolution and Systematics · 2025-09-02 · 5 citations

  articleOpen access

  Drought, wildfire, wind, insects, and pathogens can interact across space and time to shape forest ecosystems. Although subdisciplines in ecology have long studied individual disturbances, their interactions remain poorly understood, particularly under climate change. Further, inconsistent terminology used to describe these interactions compounds this gap. To address this challenge, we first develop a unifying framework and then review the literature to synthesize climate change effects on the seven classes of forest disturbance interactions. Climate change alters the impacts of disturbance interactions by shifting ( a ) the characteristics of disturbances and ( b ) the effects of interactions when they occur. Many studies document amplifying effects of climate change, and disturbance interactions governed by nonlinearities and positive feedbacks can be particularly transformative in forest ecosystems. In some cases, however, climate change can dampen outcomes of disturbance interactions, which may buffer forests from disturbance impacts. Critically, climate change is expected to increase the frequency of ecosystem transitions worldwide by amplifying the outcomes of complex interactions, particularly coupled feedbacks and network effects. Although there is strong evidence that climate change is modifying some disturbance interactions, they remain an important, yet understudied frontier in ecology.

  PublisherDOI

• Basal Area Loss from Fire Using Field-Calibrated Remote Sensing Refines Western U.S. Fire Severity Measurements

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Pre‐fire structure drives variability in post‐fire aboveground carbon and fuel profiles in wet temperate forests

  Ecosphere · 2025-12-01 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Biological legacies (i.e., materials that persist following disturbance; “legacies”) shape ecosystem functioning and feedbacks to future disturbances, yet how legacies are driven by pre‐disturbance ecosystem state and disturbance severity is poorly understood—especially in ecosystems influenced by infrequent and severe disturbances. Focusing on wet temperate forests as an archetype of these ecosystems, we characterized live and dead aboveground biomass 2–5 years post‐fire in western Washington and northwestern Oregon, USA, to ask: How do pre‐fire stand age (i.e., pre‐disturbance ecosystem state) and burn severity drive variability in initial post‐fire legacies, specifically (1) aboveground biomass carbon and (2) fuel profiles? Dominant drivers of post‐fire legacies varied by response variable, with pre‐disturbance ecosystem state driving total legacy amounts and disturbance severity moderating legacy condition. Total post‐fire carbon was ~3–4 times greater in mid‐ and late‐seral stands compared to young stands. In unburned and low‐severity fire stands, >70% of post‐fire total carbon was live, and canopy fuel profiles were largely indistinguishable, suggesting greater continuity of structure and function following low‐severity fire. Conversely, in high‐severity stands, >95% of post‐fire total carbon was dead and sparse canopy fuel remained. Regardless of burn severity, most biomass present pre‐fire persisted following fire, suggesting high‐carbon pre‐fire stands lead to high‐carbon post‐fire stands (and vice versa). Persistence of legacy biomass in high‐severity stands, even as it decays, will therefore buffer total ecosystem carbon storage as live carbon recovers over time. Further, all burned stands had considerable production of black carbon in charred wood biomass which can support ecosystem functioning and promote long‐term carbon storage. Initial post‐fire fuel profiles are likely sufficient to support fire in all stands, but reburn potential may be greater in high‐severity stands due to rapid regeneration of flammable live surface vegetation and more exposed microclimatic conditions. Effects of fuel reduction from fire on mediating the occurrence and potential behavior of subsequent fires in high‐productivity systems therefore appear short‐lived. Our findings demonstrate the importance of pre‐disturbance ecosystem state in dictating many aspects of initial post‐disturbance structure and function, with important implications for managing post‐fire recovery trajectories in some of Earth's most productive and high‐biomass forests.

  PublisherDOI

• Fire in focus: Clarifying metrics and terminology for better ecological insight

  Journal of Applied Ecology · 2025-07-16

  articleOpen access

  Abstract Changing fire regimes are profoundly impacting ecosystems and society, requiring rapid advancement in fire‐related knowledge within and across disciplines. Given the influx of new disciplines into the fire field, a lack of transparent vocabulary for the application and interpretation of fire regime attributes and fire metrics impedes the capacity to scale ecological knowledge across ecosystems and continents. In this article, we acknowledge there are many ways to define or measure fire metrics, but demonstrate how precision and context are important for interpreting fire effects on biota. We illustrate the concept of linking fire metrics to specific relevant ecological mechanisms, using plants as an example. Synthesis and applications . This article demonstrates how considering the processes through which fire influences individuals, populations, communities, and ecosystems acknowledges the connectivity between energetic, temporal, and spatial attributes of fire. This framework can help researchers and practitioners, particularly those new to the field, select fire metrics for research and management, interpret previous studies, and form a growing body of knowledge on fire‐related change.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Landscape disturbance status and trend analysis report for the North Coast and Cascades Inventory and Monitoring Network, 1987–2017

  National Park Service · 2025-01-01

  report

  Disturbance is a key characteristic of landscapes that significantly influences ecosystem functions such as carbon storage, water storage, and nutrient cycling, as well as ecosystem structure and productivity. This report summarizes disturbance patterns and trends for three national parks—North Cascades National Park Service Complex, Olympic National Park, and Mount Rainier National Park—and adjacent federally protected wilderness areas in the Pacific Northwest. We assessed changes greater than 0.8 ha across a 31-year period from 1987 through 2017 as detected using freely available satellite imagery, an automated change detection algorithm, and human review to identify and label disturbance areas in the following categories: Fire, Riparian Change, Avalanche, Defoliation, Mass Movement, Blowdown, Coastal Change, Ice Damage, Development, and Clearing. Fire was the predominant disturbance category for all parks combined, affecting 78% of cumulative disturbed area, followed by Defoliation which affected approximately 12% of total disturbed area. Generalized linear models indicated significant increases of annual disturbed area affected by Fire at Mount Rainier and Olympic National Park. Mean disturbance patch size also increased for Mount Rainier and all park study areas combined. Additionally, the number of Defoliation disturbance events at North Cascades National Park Service Complex and in all park study areas combined increased in the latter half of the study period (2000 to 2017) compared with the first half, as well as annual area affected by Defoliation in the eastern portion of North Cascades. These results, maps, and summaries provide useful baseline information about the frequency, extent, and magnitude of landscape change processes in and adjacent to our parks that can be used for guiding natural resource planning and understanding disturbance patterns in remote wilderness areas.

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Spatiotemporal Interactions Among Biotic Disturbance Agents, Biological Legacies, and Compensatory Responses: Consequences for Temperate Forest Resilience

  NSF · $324k · 2019–2023

Frequent coauthors

• Daniel C. Donato

  47 shared

• Monica G. Turner

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  40 shared

• William H. Romme

  Colorado State University

  23 shared

• Michelle C. Agne

  Murdoch University

  17 shared

• Robert A. Andrus

  Washington State University

  17 shared

• Mike A. Battaglia

  US Forest Service

  15 shared

• Thomas T. Veblen

  14 shared

• Winslow D. Hansen

  Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

  14 shared

Labs

• Brian J. Harvey LabPI

Education

• PhD, Integrative Biology

  University of Wisconsin Madison

  2015

• Masters, Geography and Environment

  San Francisco State University

  2010

• BA, Geography and Environmental Studies

  University of California Santa Barbara

  2003

Awards & honors

• Jack and George Corkery Professorship in Forest Sciences