Jacob Levine

Journal Article Global change biology · August 2025 Despite widespread concern over increases in wildfire severity, the mechanisms underlying this trend remain unclear, hampering our ability to mitigate the severity of future fires. There is substantial uncertainty regarding the relative roles of extreme we ... Full text Cite

Trait diversity in plant communities maintained by competition for water and light

Journal Article Ecological Monographs · February 1, 2025 Ecological communities frequently exhibit remarkable taxonomic and trait diversity, and this diversity is consistently shown to regulate ecosystem function and resilience. However, ecologists lack a synthetic theory for how this diversity is maintained whe ... Full text Cite

Why ecologists struggle to predict coexistence from functional traits.

Journal Article Trends in ecology & evolution · February 2025 The rationale behind trait-based ecology is that shifting focus from species' taxonomic names to their measurable characteristics ('functional traits') leads to greater generality and predictive power. This idea has been applied to one of ecology's most in ... Full text Cite

Competition for time: Evidence for an overlooked, diversity-maintaining competitive mechanism.

Journal Article Ecology letters · March 2024 Understanding how diversity is maintained in plant communities requires that we first understand the mechanisms of competition for limiting resources. In ecology, there is an underappreciated but fundamental distinction between systems in which the depleti ... Full text Cite

Ecological lags govern the pace and outcome of plant community responses to 21st-century climate change.

Journal Article Ecology letters · October 2022 Forecasting the trajectories of species assemblages in response to ongoing climate change requires quantifying the time lags in the demographic and ecological processes through which climate impacts species' abundances. Since experimental climate manipulat ... Full text Cite

Higher incidence of high-severity fire in and near industrially managed forests

Journal Article Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment · September 1, 2022 The increasing prevalence of high-severity wildfire in forests in the US state of California is connected to past forest management, but uncertainty remains regarding the differential effects of land ownership on these trends. To determine whether differin ... Full text Cite

Competition for water and species coexistence in phenologically structured annual plant communities.

Journal Article Ecology letters · May 2022 Both competition for water and phenological variation are important determinants of plant community structure, but ecologists lack a synthetic theory for how they affect coexistence outcomes. We developed an analytically tractable model of water competitio ... Full text Cite

Silviculture can facilitate repeat prescribed burn programs with long-term strategies

Journal Article California Agriculture · January 1, 2022 A significant expansion of prescribed fire activity will be necessary to mitigate growing wildfire hazard in California forests. Forest managers can facilitate this expansion by promoting forest structures that allow for more effective implementation of pr ... Full text Cite

Opportunities for winter prescribed burning in mixed conifer plantations of the Sierra Nevada

Journal Article Fire Ecology · December 1, 2021 Background: Young, planted forests are particularly vulnerable to wildfire. High severity effects in planted forests translate to the loss of previous reforestation investments and the loss of future ecosystem service gains. We conducted prescribed burns i ... Full text Cite

Generalized additive models reveal among-stand variation in live tree biomass equations

Journal Article Canadian Journal of Forest Research · January 1, 2021 Accurate estimation of forest biomass is important for scientists and policymakers interested in carbon accounting, nutrient cycling, and forest resilience. Estimates often rely on the allometry of trees; however, limited datasets, uncertainty in model for ... Full text Cite

Prescribed fire shrub consumption in a sierra nevada mixed-conifer forest

Journal Article Canadian Journal of Forest Research · January 1, 2021 Live shrubs in forest understories pose a challenge for mitigating wildfire risk with prescribed fire. Factors driving shrub consumption in prescribed fires are variable and difficult to explain. This study investigated spatial patterns and drivers of Sier ... Full text Cite

Forest stand and site characteristics influence fuel consumption in repeat prescribed burns

Journal Article International Journal of Wildland Fire · January 1, 2020 Prescribed fire is a vital tool for mitigating wildfire hazard and restoring ecosystems in many western North American forest types. However, there can be considerable variability in fuel consumption from prescribed burns, which affects both hazard mitigat ... Full text Cite