SPECIAL ISSUE FIRE AND WATER: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON FIRE'S ROLE IN SHAPING WETLAND ECOSYSTEMS INTRODUCTION

This special issue of Fire Ecology is dedicated to furthering scientific understanding of the role fire plays in the development and functioning of wetland ecosystems. While not initially intuitive, the concept of fire exerting significant influence on how wetland environments function has only recently become a prominent topic of discussion among researchers, although it has been recognized by the management community for some time. This new interest in determining how large scale disturbances modulate ecological processes in wetlands led to a series of invited talks at a Fire in Wetlands session during the 9th International Association for Ecology (INTECOL) meeting in Orlando, Florida, USA, in 2012. The collection of work presented here is the product of that special session, and includes research covering diverse topics such as fire effects on wetland biogeochemistry, vegetation community structure, and wildlife dynamics. Managers' perspectives, while presented in multiple talks during the INTECOL session, are captured here in discussions of the management implications of the research presented. This introduction summarizes each of the papers included in this special issue and is organized into topics of biogeochemistry, vegetation, community dynamics, and wildlife dynamics. The summarizing comments include key messages for management and future directions for research on fire in wetlands.