Brian J. Harvey

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

Selected publications

• Fire as a fundamental ecological process: Research advances and frontiers

  Journal of Ecology · 2020 · 679 citations

  Abstract Fire is a powerful ecological and evolutionary force that regulates organismal traits, population sizes, species interactions, community composition, carbon and nutrient cycling and ecosystem function. It also presents a rapidly growing societal challenge, due to both increasingly destructive wildfires and fire exclusion in fire‐dependent ecosystems. As an ecological process, fire integrates complex feedbacks among biological, social and geophysical processes, requiring coordination acr…

  DOI

• Changing wildfire, changing forests: the effects of climate change on fire regimes and vegetation in the Pacific Northwest, USA

  Fire Ecology · 2020-01-27 · 617 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Background Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana, USA) have been immense in recent years, capturing the attention of resource managers, fire scientists, and the general public. This paper synthesizes understanding of the potential effects of changing climate and fire regimes on Pacific Northwest forests, including effects on disturbance and stress interactions, forest structure and composition, and post-fire ecological processes. We frame thi…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Wildfire-Driven Forest Conversion in Western North American Landscapes

  BioScience · 2020-05-18 · 616 citations

  articleOpen access

  Changing disturbance regimes and climate can overcome forest ecosystem resilience. Following high-severity fire, forest recovery may be compromised by lack of tree seed sources, warmer and drier postfire climate, or short-interval reburning. A potential outcome of the loss of resilience is the conversion of the prefire forest to a different forest type or nonforest vegetation. Conversion implies major, extensive, and enduring changes in dominant species, life forms, or functions, with impacts on…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Projected increases in western US forest fire despite growing fuel constraints

  Communications Earth & Environment · 2021 · 289 citations

  Abstract Escalating burned area in western US forests punctuated by the 2020 fire season has heightened the need to explore near-term macroscale forest-fire area trajectories. As fires remove fuels for subsequent fires, feedbacks may impose constraints on the otherwise climate-driven trend of increasing forest-fire area. Here, we test how fire-fuel feedbacks moderate near-term (2021–2050) climate-driven increases in forest-fire area across the western US. Assuming constant fuels, climate–fire mo…

  DOI

• Reimagine fire science for the anthropocene

  PNAS Nexus · 2022 · 96 citations

  Fire is an integral component of ecosystems globally and a tool that humans have harnessed for millennia. Altered fire regimes are a fundamental cause and consequence of global change, impacting people and the biophysical systems on which they depend. As part of the newly emerging Anthropocene, marked by human-caused climate change and radical changes to ecosystems, fire danger is increasing, and fires are having increasingly devastating impacts on human health, infrastructure, and ecosystem ser…

  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

Similar researchers at University of Washington

• Dan Brownh-65
• Joshua Lawlerh-64
• Aaron J. Wirsingh-53