Schwilk D. W. auteur aut IRD Alam M. A. auteur aut IRD Gill N. auteur aut IRD Murray B. R. auteur aut IRD Nolan R. H. auteur aut IRD Ondei S. auteur aut IRD Perry G. L. W. auteur aut IRD Smith A. M. S. auteur aut IRD Bowman Dmjs auteur aut IRD Fidelis A. auteur aut IRD Jaureguiberry P. auteur aut IRD Oliveras Menor Imma auteur aut IRD Rosado B. H. P. auteur aut IRD Roland H. auteur aut IRD Yebra M. auteur aut IRD Yelenik S. G. auteur aut IRD Curran T. J. auteur aut IRD text journalArticle eng text/pdf born digital access Despite fire being one of the oldest and most important ecological disturbance processes on Earth, many aspects of fire-vegetation feedbacks are poorly understood, limiting their accurate representation in predictive models. Translating plant flammability traits to fire behavior and fire effects on ecosystems has proven a challenge with different disciplines approaching the problem at widely different scales. One approach has been a top-down assessment of ecosystem-level effects of vegetation structural characteristics and plant physiology on fuel properties such as fuel moisture. This approach has had some success, but is often forced to collapse species-specific variation into a small number of functional types and, as a practical necessity, usually focuses on highly plastic traits (e.g., moisture content) that can be modeled across an ecosystem without the need to characterize species-specific characteristics. The other approach grew out of trait-centric comparative ecology and focused on how traits might influence individual plant flammability. However, the degree to which such lab-based flammability trials reflect real species-specific differences maintained during wildland fires has been questioned. We review the history of these approaches, discuss where each has succeeded, and identify areas of research aimed at closing the apparent gap in scale. specialized combustibility consumability fire behavior fire regime flammability fuel architecture fuel load fuel moisture ignitibility plant traits 076 [Early access] Special issue [17 p.] 2025 0002-9122 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010093531 10.1002/ajb2.70040 0002-9122 [F B010093531] https://www.documentation.ird.fr/hor/fdi:010093531 https://www.documentation.ird.fr/intranet/publi/2025-06/010093531.pdf Accès réservé (Intranet de l'IRD) IRD - Base Horizon / Pleins textes 2025-06-11 2026-06-12 fdi:010093531 fre