Our Fire Science Exchange Network partners up in the North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange have produced a new research brief that explores work from Penn State University on the connections between Eastern US forest mesophication (due to fire suppression) and the concurrent rise in tick populations and tick-related diseases. Check out the research brief below. You can also read the related publication by Gallagher et al. (2022) in the journal Ecological Applications.

Michael R. Gallagher, Jesse Kreye, Erika Machtinger, Alexis Everland, Nathaniel Schmidt, and Nicholas S. Skowronski (2022) Can restoration of fire-dependent ecosystems reduce ticks and tick-borne disease prevalence in the eastern United States? Ecological Applications, e2637 https://doi.org/10.1002/eap.2637