Interest in prescribed fire science has grown over the past few decades due to the increasing application of prescribed fire by managers to mitigate wildfire hazards, restore biodiversity, and improve ecosystem resilience. Numerous ecological disciplines use prescribed fire experiments to provide land managers with evidence-based information to support prescribed fire management. Documenting variation in the context and conditions during prescribed fire experimental treatments is critical for management inference, but inconsistencies in reporting critical experimental details can complicate interpretation. Such details are needed to provide ecological and empirical context for data, facilitate experimental replication, enable meta-analyses, and maximize utility for other scientists and practitioners. To evaluate reporting quality in the recent literature, we reviewed 219 prescribed fire experiments from 16 countries published in 11 refereed journals over the last 5 years. Our results suggest substantial shortcomings in the reporting of critical data that compromise the utility of this research. Few studies had specific information on burning conditions such as fuel moisture (22%), quantitative fuel loads (36%), fire weather (53%), and fire behavior (30%). Further, our analysis revealed that 63% of the studies provided precise coordinates for their study area, while 30% of studies indicated the prescribed fire date. Only 54% of the studies provided descriptions of the ignition characteristics. Given these common deficiencies, we suggest minimum reporting standards for future prescribed fire experiments. These standards could be applied to journal author guidelines, directed to researchers and reviewers by the editor, and promoted in the education of fire ecologists. Establishing reporting standards will increase the quality, applicability, and reproducibility of prescribed fire science, facilitate future research syntheses, and foster actionable science.

Flight behavior of soaring birds depends on a complex array of physiological, social, demographic, and environmental factors. California Condors (Gymnogyps californianus) rely on thermal and orographic updrafts to subsidize extended bouts of soaring flight, and their soaring flight performance is expected to vary in response to environmental variation and, potentially, with experience. We collected 6298 flight tracks described by high-frequency GPS telemetry data from five birds ranging in age from 1 to 19 yr old and followed over 32 d in summer 2016. Using these data, we tested the hypothesis that climb rate, an indicator of flight performance, would be related to the topographic and meteorological variables the bird experienced, and also to its age. Climb rate was greater when condors were flying in faster winds and during environmental conditions that were conducive to updraft development. However, we found no effect of age on climb rate. Although many of these relationships were expected based on flight theory, the lack of an effect of age was unexpected. Our work expands understanding of the relationship condors have with the environment, and it also suggests the potential for as-yet unexplored complexity to this relationship. As such, this study provides insight into avian flight behavior and, because flight performance influences bird behavior and exposure to anthropogenic risk, it has potential consequences for development of conservation management plans.