About

T. Adam Coates, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Wildland Fire Ecology and Management at Virginia Tech's Forest Resources and Environmental Conservation department. He holds a Ph.D. in Forest Resources from Clemson University, earned in 2017, along with a Master's and Bachelor's degree in Forest Resources and Forest Resource Management from Clemson University. His research focuses on the impacts of wildland fire on ecosystem processes and properties, including topics such as restoration ecology, fuels, fire behavior, silviculture, soils, wildlife habitat, and water quality. Dr. Coates's work explores the potential impacts of biomass burning at varying levels of fire intensity and severity, the use of prescribed fire in the Appalachian Mountains, and the role of fire in global carbon cycling. He is actively involved in teaching courses such as Wildland Fire Ecology and Management and Advanced Wildland Fire Ecology and Management. His contributions include examining long-term effects of fire management practices on forest composition, soil chemistry, and fire behavior, as well as promoting wildland fire education and safety.

Research topics

• Environmental science
• Ecology
• Geography
• Forestry
• Biology
• Geology
• Agronomy
• Organic chemistry
• Chemistry
• Agroforestry
• Environmental chemistry

Selected publications

• Taxonomic and multifunctional response of soil microbial communities to wildfire, prescribed fire, and partial harvesting in the Southern Appalachian Mountains, United States

  Frontiers in Forests and Global Change · 2026-01-30

  articleOpen access

  Southern Appalachian forests have varied land-use history and are managed with different objectives, including maintenance of ecosystem services and harvesting timber. Concurrently, this region has experienced long-term wildfire suppression, causing shifts in dominant vegetation (i.e., mesophication) and is projected to have more frequent, severe drought and wildfire activity in the future. Regional wildland fire effects are not well understood in the context of the broader set of management activities, such as partial harvesting and prescribed burning, that influence soil microbial communities and the ecosystem processes they regulate. We use a taxonomic and multifunctional approach to compare soil across four watersheds with different management or disturbance histories: low-severity prescribed burning, high-severity wildfire, fire exclusion, or partial harvesting. Soil microbial community structure was influenced by historical disturbance effects, while ecosystem functions are constrained by resource availability following recent disturbance. Prescribed burns did not change microbial community composition relative to the fire excluded watershed; however, they did increase N availability and N acquisition enzyme activity. Microbial community structure of the post-wildfire and partially harvested watersheds was influenced by environmental filters related to disturbance, although microbial multifunctionality in the post-wildfire watershed was not significantly different from fire excluded and prescribed burned watersheds. The partially harvested watershed exhibited elevated NO 3 − and pH, increased C acquisition enzyme activity, and lowered C use efficiency relative to other watersheds. This study provides context to microbial influences on ecosystem dynamics following both anthropogenic and natural disturbances, helping managers understand the implications of management on forest soils and belowground processes.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Bee-Community Response to Soil Disturbance and Wildland Fire on Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia

  Northeastern Naturalist · 2025-05-28 · 1 citations

  articleSenior author

  Physical disturbances caused by military land use can create and maintain early successional habitats beneficial to a wide range of taxa, including native bee communities. We conducted bee, plant, and soil surveys on Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia to determine how different combinations of disturbances (such as wildland fire, ordnance testing, and mechanical compaction) would affect bee biodiversity. Disturbances that affected soil through exposure or compaction had varying effects on the bee community depending on the individual species, with low to moderate disturbance promoting the highest bee species richness. Fire frequency was weakly correlated with bee diversity. Similar studies of additional military installations are warranted to better understand how disturbances that facilitate early successional habitat may impact bee communities.

  PublisherDOI

• The national Fire and Fire Surrogate study: Effects of fuel treatments in the Western and Eastern United States after 20 years

  Ecological Applications · 2025-01-01 · 14 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The national Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study was initiated more than two decades ago with the goal of evaluating the ecological impacts of mechanical treatments and prescribed fire in different ecosystems across the United States. Since then, 4 of the original 12 sites remain active in managing and monitoring the original FFS study which provides a unique opportunity to look at the long-term effects of these treatments in different regions. These sites include California (Blodgett Forest Research Station), Montana (Lubrecht Experimental Forest), North Carolina (Green River Game Land), and Ohio (Ohio Hills). Although regions differed in ecosystem type (e.g., conifer- vs. hardwood-dominated), the overall goals of the FFS study were to promote desirable, fire-adapted species, reduce fire hazard, and improve understory diversity. Our study uses multivariate techniques to compare how these desired outcomes were maintained over the last 20 years and discusses whether we would modify the original treatments given what we know now. Our findings indicate that mechanical treatments and prescribed fire can promote desired tree species, mitigate potential fire behavior by reducing fuels and retaining larger-sized trees, decrease tree mortality, and stimulate regeneration-effects that are still apparent even after 20 years. However, we also found that maintaining desired outcomes was regionally specific with western sites (California and Montana) showing more desirable characteristics under mechanical treatments, while the eastern sites (North Carolina and Ohio) showed more desirable characteristics after prescribed burning. The beneficial effects of treatment were also more apparent in the long term when sites followed up with repeated treatments, which can be adapted to meet new objectives and conditions. These findings highlight the FFS study as an invaluable resource for research and provide evidence for meeting long-term restoration goals if treatments can be adapted to ecosystem type, be maintained by repeated treatments, and accommodate new goals by adapting treatments to changing conditions.

  PublisherDOI

• Crown complementarity rather than crown selection contributes to stem complementarity in genetic mixtures of Pinus taeda L

  Acta Oecologica · 2025-01-23 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Overstory Species Dominance Impacts Soil Fertility in Frequently Burned Coastal Plain Pine ( <i>Pinus</i> spp.) Forests: A Case Study from the Zuni Pine Barrens, Virginia, USA

  Communications in Soil Science and Plant Analysis · 2025-03-07 · 2 citations

  articleCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Reducing resilience debt: Mechanical felling and repeated prescribed fires may sustain eastern oak forests

  Ecological Applications · 2025-10-01 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  The misalignment of species adaptations with current environmental conditions can cause ecosystems to lose resilience, accumulate resilience debt, and transition to another state. Such a state change is evident in eastern North American broadleaf forests where dominant tree species are shifting from oaks (Quercus spp.) to mesophytic species such as maples (Acer spp.). The replacement of oaks is widespread and threatens the ecosystem services these forests provide, generating interest in using forest management to halt or reverse this change. The national Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study was a large-scale study of forest management practices, and the Green River FFS site in western North Carolina (initiated in 2001) offers the opportunity to understand how management actions affect oak forest resilience. The Green River FFS site implemented three experimental treatments replicated across three spatial blocks: mechanical felling of saplings and ericaceous shrubs (Mech), prescribed fire (Fire), and a combination (Mech + Fire), which were compared to untreated controls (Control). Here, we used this long-running experiment to evaluate oak forest resilience by examining changes in overstory basal area and forest composition among overstory trees, saplings, and seedlings. We found that basal area increased in the Control and Mech treatments, was unchanged in the Fire treatment, and decreased in the Mech + Fire treatment as a result of mortality. Oak sapling abundances increased with reduced basal area, a pattern not found with the major mesophytic representative, maples. This suggests that oaks are well positioned to recruit to the overstory where basal area has decreased due to overstory mortality, and at the Green River FFS site, this was best achieved in the Mech + Fire treatment. Creating conditions where oak saplings have an advantage over maples requires the mortality of some overstory trees, including desirable oaks. Taken together, our findings suggest that the misalignment of oak traits and current environmental conditions has led to resilience debt, which may be reduced when management actions mimic a severe disturbance that results in the opening of the canopy. Thus, management actions that combine mechanical felling and repeated prescribed fires may promote sustained oak dominance in the future.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Green River Fire and Fire Surrogates Study: Tree and duff measurements

  Forest Service Research Data Archive · 2024-03-13

  dataset

  This archive contains research data collected and/or funded by Forest Service Research and Development (FS R&D), U.S. Department of Agriculture. It is a resource for accessing both short and long-term FS R&D research data, which includes Experimental Forest and Range data. It is a way to both preserve and share the quality science of our researchers.

  PublisherDOI

• Thirty-five-year timber harvesting disturbance effects on composition and biomass of tupelo-cypress (Nyssa-Taxodium) forested wetlands, southwest Alabama, USA

  Wetlands · 2023-11-28 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Prescribed Fire Use Among Black Landowners in the Red Hills Region, USA

  Ethnobiology Letters · 2023-08-04

  articleOpen access

  The Red Hills Region of southern Alabama, northern Florida, and southwestern Georgia is one of the most prominent areas in the United States for conducting prescribed fire research and is the birthplace of fire ecology. The culture of prescribed burning in the Red Hills has been influenced by multiple ethnic groups, including the Seminole and Creek nations, Black landowners, and White researchers. Given the distinctive reliance of the region on prescribed fire, it is noteworthy that the combined issues of Black land loss, underrepresentation, and incentives for using prescribed fire on private lands in the southeastern United States have generated questions about diversity and inclusion in landowner outreach. To increase understanding about Black landowner historic and current use of prescribed fire for land management in the Red Hills Region, formal and informal interviews were conducted from May through August 2019 with 21 Black landowners and tenants to document the perspectives and thoughts of Black landowners and tenants of southern Alabama, northern Florida, and southwestern Georgia. The results of this research show that Black landowners, tenants, and fire experts, have been, and continue to be, influential in the development and sustainment of fire traditions in the Red Hills and in the resilience of the longleaf pine ecosystem.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Thirty-five-year timber harvesting disturbance effects on composition and biomass of Nyssa-Taxodium forested wetlands, southwest Alabama, USA

  Research Square · 2023-01-30

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract Thirty-five years post-harvest, effects of harvest disturbances upon tree composition and aboveground biomass were evaluated in a Nyssa aquatica (water-tupelo)- Taxodium distichum (baldcypress) bottomland. The study site, along the Tensaw River, is within the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta in southwest Alabama. Nine replications of four disturbances were evaluated: no harvest reference (REF), clearcutting with helicopter removal (HELI), HELI combined with skidder extraction simulation (SKID), and HELI combined with broadcast spray (glyphosate) of sprouts and seedlings for two years (GLYPH). Thirty-five years post-treatment, species, diameter at breast height (DBH; 1.37 m) and total tree height were measured at monumented sample plots and converted to aboveground biomass. Clip plots were installed for herbaceous and woody stems shorter than DBH. Results indicate that HELI and SKID treatments remain on a trajectory to produce species composition and volume similar to REF. GLYPH lacked adequate coppice regeneration and regenerated from seedbanks and flood and wind disseminated seed, thus the treatment has succeeded from an herbaceous freshwater marsh to an open woodland/savanna community. The GLYPH treatment emphasizes the importance of coppice for rapid tree regeneration and the need for coppice success on sites having altered hydrology. This research further demonstrates the capacity for long-term recovery of forested wetland ecosystems following harvest. Furthermore, several site/stand factors favored stand regeneration, including adequate initial stocking of species capable of stump sprouting, intact hydrology with annual sediment deposits, shrink-swell soils, nearby seed sources and flood tolerances of original species acted collectively to favor rapid recovery from both HELI and SKID disturbances.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Alex Chow

  Chinese University of Hong Kong

  14 shared

• W. Michael Aust

  Virginia Tech

  13 shared

• Hamed Majidzadeh

  South Carolina Sea Grant Consortium

  10 shared

• Donald L. Hagan

  Clemson University

  10 shared

• David B. MacNeill

  State University of New York at Oswego

  9 shared

• Thomas A. Waldrop

  8 shared

• Kuo‐Pei Tsai

  University of Toledo

  6 shared

• Melissa A. Thomas‐Van Gundy

  Northern Research Station

  6 shared