We aimed to assess how peatland drainage altered the spatiotemporal variability in forest cover, aboveground biomass, and tree productivity and how these changes related to the spatial variability in peat burn severity. We studied a black spruce and birch dominated boreal peatland in Parkland County, Alberta, Canada, which was drained in 1987 and burned in 2021. Using remote sensing techniques (historical imagery and LiDAR), we determined that forest cover increased by 180% following drainage and aboveground tree biomass decreased from 26.1 kg m-2 adjacent to the nearest drainage ditch to 2.8 kg m-2 95 m away from the nearest ditch. Field surveys and a LiDAR-based analysis were conducted to measure the spatial variability in peat burn severity. Drained peatland margins experienced the greatest peat burn severity with a mean depth of burn of 26.9 +/- 12.6 cm (34.0 +/- 10.1 kg C m-2) compared to natural middles at 15.3 +/- 6.2 cm (8.3 +/- 2.1 kg C m-2), where peat burn severity increased with proximity to ditches and greater aboveground biomass. We present a conceptual model outlining the increases in aboveground and peat fuel loads following drainage and suggest that the area around a ditch that is impacted by drainage, which is commonly assumed to be 30 m, likely increases through time in forested peatlands due to the afforestation feedback. Drained peatlands represent a severe fire risk for communities and fire management agencies. Peatland restoration should be integrated into fuel management strategies to reduce the risk that drained peatlands pose.

Linear clearings of vegetation to perform geophysical surveys, called seismic lines, are created for oil and gas exploration in boreal Canada and often persist on the landscape for decades after disturbance. Therefore, an assessment of environmental conditions on seismic lines is needed to inform restoration efforts. This study aimed to compile surface soil properties (upper 5–15 cm; dry bulk density, organic matter content, organic matter bulk density, volumetric water content, and water content by mass) on and off seismic lines across upland, transitional, and peatland ecosystems in northern Alberta, Canada ( N = 1638). Soil properties differ between seismic line and reference samples, especially on older “conventional” lines. Changes included higher dry bulk density, lower organic matter content, and elimination of microtopographic variability. Changes in dry bulk density can, in part, be explained by a reduction in organic matter content, but altered carbon cycling and/or compaction are also important. Restoration techniques such as inverted mounding create an entirely distinct soil condition, with higher mean bulk densities and lower organic matter contents than both on and off seismic lines. Therefore, an assessment of microtopographic recovery should be conducted before prescribing restoration treatments to limit further degradation of soil structure.

Boreal peatlands play an important role in the global carbon cycle and can provide extensive buffering against climate change by acting as fire refugia. As wildfire extent, frequency and severity increase under climate change, it is critical to identify the characteristics and drivers of boreal peatland fire refugia in different hydroclimatic and hydrogeological settings to inform ecosystem management and conservation planning. We examined the ecohydrological characteristics of eight peatland fire refugia and eight unburned reference sites 3 years after an 11,362 ha wildfire in an eastern Boreal Shield landscape. We found that the vascular and bryophyte understorey vegetation composition within the peatland fire refugia was significantly different from the reference sites. Significant predictors of the difference in vascular vegetation composition were (i) median peat depth, (ii) maximum water table depth during the growing season and (iii) pH, where median peat depth was the only significant predictor identified for the bryophyte composition. While there was no clear evidence supporting any vascular indicator species, Sphagnum rubellum and Sphagnum medium were strongly associated with peatland fire refugia in this landscape. Peatland fire refugia also had a slower water table drawdown during the longest rain-free period of the growing season and a generally shallower growing season maximum water table depth than the reference sites. We suggest that peatland ecohydrological traits such as vegetation composition and water table drawdown rate may be useful to identify potential peatland fire refugia as they are indicators of negative ecohydrological feedbacks that maintain high peat moisture during drying.

In 2023, all regions of British Columbia (BC) experienced record-breaking fire weather and wildfires, with extreme behavior and social-ecological effects. In total, 2245 wildfires burned 2840 545 hectares. Contemporary wildfires are the culmination of a century of altered human-forest-wildfire relationships, exacerbated by climate change. Transformative change is urgently needed for the ecosystems and communities to be resilient to wildfire. We present six interrelated strategies needed to amplify the pace and scale of change in response to recent wildfire extremes: (1) Immediately diversify wildfire response strategies and restore the ecological and cultural role of fire in BC's ecosystems. (2) Invest in suppression capacity at local and national scales. (3) Support innovations to overcome the economic barriers for mitigating risk and building resilience within communities and the wildland-urban interface. (4) Apply landscape fire management to drive a paradigm shift in forest management to increase ecological resilience to wildfire. (5) Transform wildfire governance to support collaborative and community-based solutions. (6) Strengthen expertise and capacity to uplift diverse ways of knowing, managing, and coexisting with fire. These strategies, combined with bold policy and governance changes and supported by sustained funding programs, provide a holistic approach to transform management and coexist with wildfire.

Peatlands are globally important long-term sinks of carbon, however there is concern that climate change-mediated drought will weaken their carbon sink function due to enhanced decomposition and moss moisture stress. Furthermore, heightened drought will also increase peat combustion loss during wildfire leading to peatland degradation and a potential ecosystem regime shift. Despite research developments on ecohydrological tipping points in semi-arid ecosystems, research in peatlands on the wet end of the ecosystem continuum has been “bogged down” (pun fully intended) by the traditional conceptual models of peatland hydrology and ecology. The consequences of this thinking loom large, given that northern peatlands face increases in the severity, areal extent, and frequency of climate-mediated (e.g., wildfire, drought) and land-use (e.g., drainage, flooding, and mining) disturbances, placing the future integrity of these critical ecosystem services in jeopardy.In this presentation we explore the need for “thinking outside the bog” to quantify the ecohydrological tipping points to drought and wildfire. We argue that peatland ecohydrological resilience is a non-linear function of water storage dynamics and that water table data or peat moisture data alone are insufficient to capture this hydrological complexity. Given that the ability of Sphagnum moss to resist drought is largely a function of the rate of water loss by evaporation, the rate of upward water supply from the water table, and the water storage properties of the peat matrix, we suggest that ecohydrological resilience can be quantified by the magnitude and duration of the disconnect between the water table and near-surface peat. We discuss ways to measure ecohydrological resilience and explore simple metrics that reveal when critical tipping points have been exceeded and the implications this has for carbon storage and fluxes.

The Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS), and in particular the Fire Weather Index System (FWI), are tools used widely across Canada and globally for assessing wildfire potential and predicting wildfire behaviour. While the FWI system has been readily utilized across a number of different forest stand types, the use of the FWI system to represent wildfire potential or behaviour in peatlands has been shown to be less effective, especially in the case of smouldering (flameless) peat fires. This is, in part, due to the wide variation in peat properties and hydrological responses to meteorological forcings between different peatland types and hydrogeological settings within the same region. To begin to address this issue the next generation CFFDRS has incorporated a Peat Moisture Code (PMC) that better represents the ecohydrological feedbacks controlling peatland water table and near-surface moisture responses to fire weather. This new code, however, will still require interpretation based on peatland characteristics to best understand the potential for peatland smouldering fires to initiate and propagate. Here we utilized Hydrus 1-D to model the hydrological response to a drying period across a large range of hypothetical peat property profiles to quantify peat smouldering thresholds and to test the robustness of the PMC. Using the same fire weather inputs used in Hydrus, we determined the daily PMC (and Drought Code) value throughout the drying period. Using the soil water tension and moisture content output by Hydrus and the bulk density with depth input into our Peat Smouldering and Ignition (PSI) model, which uses a thermodynamic approach to predict smouldering propagation, we determined the PMC values that corresponded to varying levels of peat smouldering potential (i.e., surface ignition, moderate smouldering depth, and extreme smouldering depth) across the range of peat profile types. Finally, we mapped typical peatland types onto the “phase space” of peat properties to develop a tool for fire management agencies to best interpret PMC values and the smouldering potential they represent in the various peatlands within their management areas.

Peatland margins are a distinct ecotone especially vulnerable to deep smouldering in the Boreal Plains because they can experience greater water table drawdown during dry periods compared to peatland middles. Margin recovery trajectories have potentially important implications for wildfire behaviour as both the rate of vegetation recovery and community composition control fuel load and flammability. We compared peatland margin and middle vegetation trajectories using a chronosequence of time-since-fire in boreal Alberta, Canada. Margins had unique post-fire indicator species, with a higher broadleaf cover and limited Sphagnum moss colonization. Middles and margins became less distinct with greater time-since-fire, where both were dominated by feathermoss as canopy closure increased. High burn severity in margins can expose the seedbank in the underlying mineral soil to favourable conditions, causing rapid accumulation of broadleaf aboveground biomass and limiting Sphagnum establishment. The rapid accumulation of aboveground biomass increases potential fuel load, while exclusion of Sphagnum increases future smouldering potential given the dense peat in the margin ecotone. However, the dominance of deciduous vegetation for several decades post fire would serve to limit wildfire compared to a conifer-dominated system, particularly post leaf-out. Thus, peatland margins could represent a positive feedback to peat carbon loss for early season fires and a negative feedback for post leaf-out fires due to the interplay between fuel load, fire seasonality, and species flammability. Characterization of margins as distinct ecotones with a separate vegetation structure and species composition from peatland middles provides critical insight about wildfire vulnerability and carbon storage in the Boreal Plains.

Peatlands are critical for global climate regulation storing approximately 500 Gt of carbon and accounting for 33% of global soil organic carbon. Regionally, these ecosystems provide essential wildfire resilience and are important pollutant sinks but degradation puts these key ecosystem services at risk. Smelting operations in Sudbury, ON, Canada, released approximately 12 000 t of particulate copper and nickel into the atmosphere between 1883 and 1969. Toxic metal and sulphur deposition on peatlands from smelting activities caused the widespread decline of keystone peatland moss species (i.e., Sphagnum) and altered peat properties. The changes in peat hydrophysical properties due to historical metal contamination likely reduce peatland resilience to drought and wildfires, thereby increasing the potential for toxic heavy metal remobilisation; however, these peat properties changes have yet to be quantified. We determine 1) how historical smelter pollution impacts peat hydrophysical properties by measuring bulk density, saturated hydraulic conductivity and soil water retention in the upper 40 cm of both undisturbed (located similar to 160 km outside the deposition region) and smelter-impacted peatlands, 2) use these data to explore the vulnerability of these peatlands to wildfires and drought and 3) assess the potential for natural Sphagnum moss recovery. Smelter-impacted peat had a significantly higher bulk density, lower macroporosity and saturated hydraulic conductivity that drove large differences in modelled soil water tension profiles during simulated drying events. These differences in soil water tension and retention profiles resulted in the smelter-impacted peat having a far greater proportion of the peat profile that would be susceptible to smouldering combustion than the undisturbed peat. Additionally, the smelter-impacted peat properties likely contributed to the limited Sphagnum moss recovery, while concurrently increasing drought and wildfire risk. As such, we argue that contaminated peatland restoration is necessary to enhance Sphagnum moss recovery to mitigate toxic metal remobilisation risk from drought and wildfire.

Wildfire is the dominant disturbance in northern peatlands and can release large quantities of carbon to the atmosphere through combustion. Post-fire peat hydrophobicity can inhibit moss regeneration, thereby decreasing the potential for post-fire carbon sequestration. To investigate how to enhance post-fire recovery we assessed two moss restoration methods (plugs and fragments) in an Alberta poor fen two and three years following wildfire. We first characterized post-fire peat hydrophobicity and moss regeneration in four surface cover types: Severely Burned Feather moss hollows (SB-F), Severely Burned Sphagnum fuscum hummocks (SB-S), Lightly Burned S. fuscum hummocks (LB-S), and Lightly Burned Feather moss lawns (LB-F). Across burn severities, hydrophobicity was high in feather moss and relatively low in Sphagnum moss. Similarly, hydrophobicity increased with depth over the top several centimeters in feather moss, but not in Sphagnum moss surface cover. Peat hydrophobicity appears to limit post-fire regeneration. LB-S was the least hydrophobic of the four treatments and was the only cover type in which Sphagnum moss recovered to >10% surface area, though SB-F had marginal recovery of pioneer moss species. Consequently, we conducted experiments testing the success of moss plugs and fragments of varying moss species at LB-F and SB-F surface covers, which had high hydrophobicity and low post-fire moss recovery. Experimental results indicate that the species type used in transplants is less critical in their survival than the microenvironment into which they are transplanted (i.e., burn severity). Transplant success was slightly higher in plugs than fragments, and larger plug sizes (10-15 cm) were more successful than small plugs (<10 cm). Growth was greater in SB-F than LB-F surface cover, owing to differences in post-fire hydrophobicity, and thus moisture availability. We conclude that in appropriate areas post-fire, peatland management efforts could employ large mixed-moss or Sphagnum moss transplant units while accounting for pre-fire vegetation composition and burn severity to fast-track post-fire moss and ecosystem recovery.

Peatlands are potent landscape sinks of natural and industrial toxic metals and metalloids (TMMs) but the long-term sequestration of TMMs in peatlands is at increasing risk due to climate change enhanced peatland fires. The ability of peatlands to retain TMMs results from a host of interacting hydrological, biological, geomorphological, and chemical feedbacks, which underpin peatland functionality in general. Fire is a transformative force that often disrupts these interactions and feedbacks, leading to the potential release of TMMs to our air, land, and water. Given that wildfire burned area and severity are increasing there is a need for a conceptual understanding of these interactive processes. Prior to a fire, peatland TMM mobility is relatively low, controlled by a peatland's degree of minerotrophy, degradation status, hydrogeomorphic setting and hydroclimate. Incidentally, these peatland characteristics also control the likelihood of peat ignition, creating important feedbacks on the landscape. Following ignition, the temperature and duration of a peat fire plays a critical role in determining the potential TMM emissions to the atmosphere and the post-fire geochemical conditions. We elucidate the varied emission factors of different metals, where emission factors range from 0.2 (Co or Cd) to 300 (Al) mg of metal per kg of particulate matter emitted depending on the specific metal and likely the pre-fire peat metal concentration. Following a peat fire, the geochemical and hydrological changes become increasingly important. For example, post-fire increases in pH play the strongest chemical role in limiting TMM mobilization but concurrent increases in dissolved organic matter aromaticity complicate our understanding of these processes, leading to a critical knowledge gap. At larger spatial scales, peatland and watershed ecohydrological connectivity and peat erosion modulate the release of TMMs to aquatic systems. Yet, the evolution of the ecohydrological connectivity and peat erosion potential as the peatland vegetation and hydrology recover to pre-fire conditions over the course of several to tens of years is governed by the same controls that impact pre-fire TMM mobility. Critically, the uncertainty in evolution trajectories depends on changes in biological, hydrological, climatological, and chemical conditions, limiting our ability to accurately predict these changes under a rapidly changing climate. This extensive and interdisciplinary review guides the development of a conceptual framework and highlights future research needs to better respond to the emerging threat of legacy TMM release from peatland wildfires.

Natural wildfire regimes are important for ecosystem succession, but increased frequency and severity of wildfire due to climate change can negatively alter habitat characteristics. In 2018, over 11,000 ha of a granite rock barrens landscape that extends along the eastern shoreline of Georgian Bay, Lake Huron, burned in a wildfire. This landscape is a biodiversity hotspot providing habitat for many species at risk, including Emydoidea blandingii (Blanding's Turtle) and Clemmys guttata (Spotted Turtle), where turtles nest in shallow soil deposits in cracks and crevices in the bedrock. The burned, open rock-barren habitat had ∼70% fewer available nesting sites, but suitability of remaining nest habitat was unknown. To assess the impact of the wildfire on the suitability of turtle nesting habitat, we compared soil properties and in situ thermal and moisture regimes at turtle-selected nest sites, burned and unburned rock barren habitat, and burned forested uplands that may provide newly available habitat as a result of increased canopy openness following fire. Burned and unburned rock barren habitats drained quickly following rainfall, similar to turtle-selected sites, whereas burned forested uplands drained more slowly and provided wetter incubation conditions. Burned forested uplands provided a comparable thermal regime to turtle-selected nest sites and were often moss-dominated, with a relatively open canopy. Hatch success was estimated to be 20% lower at burned rock-barren habitats compared to unburned sites. Our findings suggest that severe wildfire affects soil thermal and moisture regimes, which can negatively alter the suitability of nest habitat, but burned upland forests are likely to provide suitable nesting habitat for at-risk turtles in the first years following fire.

Colin P R McCarter1,∗, Gareth D Clay, Sophie L Wilkinson, Susan Page, Emma L Shuttleworth, Scott J Davidson, Muh Taufik, Gabriel Sigmund and James MWaddington 1 Department of Geography & Department of Biology and Chemistry, Nipissing University, North Bay, Canada 2 Department of Geography, University of Manchester, Manchester, United Kingdom 3 School of Resource & Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, Canada 4 School of Geography, Geology and the Environment, University of Leicester, Leicester, United Kingdom 5 School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom 6 Department of Geophysics and Meteorology, IPB University, Bogor, Indonesia 7 Department of Environmental Technology, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands 8 School of Earth, Environment & Society, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada ∗ Author to whom any correspondence should be addressed.

The northern peatland carbon sink plays a vital role in climate regulation; however, the future of the carbon sink is uncertain, in part, due to the changing interactions of peatlands and wildfire. Here, we use empirical datasets from natural, degraded and restored peatlands in non-permafrost boreal and temperate regions to model net ecosystem exchange and methane fluxes, integrating peatland degradation status, wildfire combustion and post-fire dynamics. We find that wildfire processes reduced carbon uptake in pristine peatlands by 35% and further enhanced emissions from degraded peatlands by 10%. The current small net sink is vulnerable to the interactions of peatland degraded area, burn rate and peat burn severity. Climate change impacts accelerated carbon losses, where increased burn severity and burn rate reduced the carbon sink by 38% and 65%, respectively, by 2100. However, our study demonstrates the potential for active peatland restoration to buffer these impacts. Northern peatland carbon sink plays a vital role in climate regulation. Here, the authors show that wildfire reduced peatland carbon uptake and enhanced emissions from degraded peatlands; climate change impacts accelerated carbon losses where increased burn rate and severity reduced carbon sink.

iWetland is a community science wetland water level monitoring platform developed by the McMaster Ecohydrology Lab and tested from 2016 to 2019 in wetlands located east of Georgian Bay, Ontario, Canada. The goal of iWetland is to engage community members in wetland science while collecting data to better understand the spatiotemporal variability in water level patterns of wetlands. We installed 24 iWetland water level monitoring stations in popular hiking and camping areas where visitors can text the water level of the wetland to an online database that automatically collates the data. Here, we share our approach for developing the iWetland community science platform and its importance for monitoring all types of wetland ecosystems. From 2016 through 2019, almost 2,000 individuals recorded more than 2,600 water table measurements. The iWetland platform successfully collected accurate water table data for 24 wetlands. We discuss the successes and shortcomings of the community science platform with respect to data collection, community engagement, and participation. We found that forming mutually beneficial partnerships with community groups paired with strong outreach presence were key to the success of this community science platform. Finally, we recommend that those interested in adopting the iWetland platform in their community partner with community groups, recognize participant contributions, identify accessible sites, and host outreach activities.

Context The mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae ) is a native bark beetle whose outbreaks leads to widespread conifer forest mortality. Of particular concern to forest and wildfire managers is the influence of MPB outbreaks on wildfire via spatial legacies left in impacted forest stands. There is, however, limited consensus in the literature regarding how MPB outbreaks affect wildfire across western North America. Objectives This meta-analysis aims to (1) summarize available evidence regarding MPB-wildfire interactions, and (2) identify environmental and methodological indicators associated with various wildfire responses (i.e., amplified, neutral, or dampened) post-outbreak. Methods We include peer-reviewed publications focusing on MPB outbreaks and subsequent wildfire activity in forests across western Canada and the USA between 2000 and 2021. A classification scheme was used to examine attributes of each publication to assess which indicators contribute most to their associated wildfire response. Results We found that spatial scale, forest fuels, and weather are main drivers of variation in wildfire response post-outbreak. Metrics of forest fuels and inclusion of weather data on a stand-scale are related to amplified fire responses, whereas dampened responses correspond to landscape-scale analyses. Furthermore, red-stage stands are associated with amplified fire response, whereas other stages are associated with dampened response—supporting current conceptual models of the importance of outbreak stage on wildfire. Conclusions Advancing our understanding regarding drivers of wildfire responses post-MPB outbreak is key to developing accurate, and comparative research studies. These findings provide crucial information for wildfire, and forest management agencies, especially in forests newly exposed to this disturbance interaction under climate change.

In northern peatlands, near‐saturated surface conditions promote valuable ecosystem services such as carbon storage and drinking water provision. Peat saturated hydraulic conductivity ( K sat ) plays an important role in maintaining wet surface conditions by moderating drainage and evapotranspiration. Peat K sat can exhibit intense spatial variability in three dimensions and can change rapidly in response to disturbance. The development of skillful predictive equations for peat K sat and other hydraulic properties, akin to mineral soil pedotransfer functions, remains a subject of ongoing research. We report a meta‐analysis of 2,507 northern peat samples, from which we developed linear models that predict peat K sat from other variables, including depth, dry bulk density, von Post score (degree of humification), and categorical information such as surface microform type and peatland trophic type (e.g., bog and fen). Peat K sat decreases strongly with increasing depth, dry bulk density, and humification; and increases along the trophic gradient from bog to fen peat. Dry bulk density and humification are particularly important predictors and increase model skill greatly; our best model, which includes these variables, has a cross‐validated r 2 of 0.75 and little bias. A second model that includes humification but omits dry bulk density, intended for rapid field estimations of K sat , also performs well (cross‐validated r 2 = 0.64). Two additional models that omit several predictors perform less well (cross‐validated r 2 ∼ 0.5), and exhibit greater bias, but allow K sat to be estimated from less comprehensive data. Our models allow improved estimation of peat K sat from simpler, cheaper measurements.

Abstract Despite estimates of climate target’s remaining carbon budget (RCB) informing critical policy, most climate projections do not account for peatland ecosystem processes, including the contribution of current or future peatland wildfires to global carbon emissions. Here, we provide the first estimate of the carbon emissions associated with non-permafrost northern peatlands that specifically includes both wildfire combustion and post-fire carbon dynamics. The inclusion of wildfire reduced the carbon sink from -59.5 ± 32.2 to -17.9 ± 45.7 g C m-2 yr-1 in natural (pristine) peatlands while degraded peatlands represented a consistent source of carbon (218.6 ± 48.1 g C m-2 yr-1). We find that small increases in average burn severity or peatland area burned (from 0.5 to 0.8 % yr-1) could tip northern peatlands from a net carbon sink to a net source, illustrating the critical importance of peatland wildfire emissions and their accounting to the RCB for global climate targets.

Northern peatlands have cooled the global climate by accumulating large quantities of soil carbon (C) over thousands of years. Maintaining the C sink function of these peatlands and their immense long-term soil C stores is critical for achieving net-zero global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 2050 to mitigate climate warming. One-quarter of the world's northern peatlands are in Canada, with these mostly intact ecosystems providing a global C service that is increasingly recognized as a critical part of nature-based solutions to combat climate change. However, land-use change and other disturbances threaten these globally important stores of "irrecoverable C" (that is, soil C lost to disturbance that will take centuries to recover). Inadequate policy safeguards to avoid conversion and degradation, and the limited quantification and reporting of peatland greenhouse-gas emissions and removals, increase the vulnerability of these peatlands. Targeted policies from local to global scales will be needed for improved decision making and incentivizing long-term C management of northern peatlands.

Boreal peatland ecosystems are generally resilient to low severity wildfire. However, climate change may increase wildfire intensity and frequency, potentially shifting wetlands to less wildfire resistant states. Peatlands formed by infilling generally undergo a succession from open water to grounded peat, with spatially complex intermediate states which may impact wildfire resistance. We explored the relationship between wetland successional states and fire severity following a > 11,000 ha wildfire in Ontario’s Boreal Shield landscape. We digitized 144 wetlands of varying successional states from aerial imagery and assessed fire severity using the Relative differenced Normalized Burn Ratio calculated from Sentinel-2A satellite imagery. Completely peat-filled wetlands were small in area (0.7 ± 2 ha) but were most frequent on the landscape (n = 99/144) compared to a smaller number (n = 8) of large (19 ± 2 ha) spatially complex wetlands that comprised > 30% of the total wetland area. In wetlands covered completely, or nearly completely, by peat, fire severity was significantly higher compared to wetlands with interspersed patches of shallow open water. Moreover, > 90% of fire resistant wetlands with open water were associated with beaver dams. Wetlands with more complex surface cover experienced lower mean fire severity but greater variability in fire severity suggesting that variable fuel configuration (i.e., spatially heterogeneous surface cover) in complex wetlands limit wildfire propagation across the wetland surface. Our findings are important for landscape conservation and wildfire management, as spatially complex wetlands host a diverse array of habitats for at-risk species and may offer protection from severe wildfires as fire refugia.