Will Fire Change The American West's Ecosystems?

 National map of regional fire behavior deviation from historical patterns. Green represents minimal deviation; yellow, a moderate deviation; and in red regions, current fire behavior is unprecedented in paleoecological records. Image: Nature Conservancy/USGS/USDA/USFS/DOI

Some think it will:

“Then, when you look at the last century, you see the climate getting warmer and drier, but until the last couple decades the amount of fire was really low. We’ve pushed fire in the opposite direction you’d expect from climate,” Marlon said.
The fire debt is finally coming due. In the Southwest, fires are reaching historically exceptional sizes and temperatures. “The fuel structure is ready to support massive, severe fires that the trees have not evolved to cope with,” said forest ecologist Dan Binkley of Colorado State University. “When the extent of the areas burned becomes large, there are no remaining sources of seeds for the next generation.”
Filling the newly open space will be grasses, shrubs and aspen, said Binkley. The forests will be gone. Something similar may also happen in California’s high-elevation Ponderosa forests, though different plant species will take their place than in the Southwest.
In the greater Yellowstone region, of which Yellowstone National Park is the iconic centerpiece, fire suppression and grazing have less effect on fire dynamics than in the Southwest. Instead, it’s climate that’s changing how fire operates in Yellowstone, said paleoecologist Erica Smithwick of Penn State University.
In 2011, Smithwick was part of a research team that described how Yellowstone fires traditionally occurred on cycles of 100 to 300 years, with its lodgepole pine forests adapted to severe burns every few centuries.
According to the researchers, rising regional temperatures mean fires will become larger and more frequent, with areas burned every few decades. Conifers, which release seeds during fire, aren’t attuned to this pace: The next generation of trees will die before they’re old enough to release new seeds.

This is definitely an issue too complex for me to speculate what the outcome will be, but my gut feeling is that within my lifetime (or actuarially-anticipated lifetime) we will realize that climate change is massively impacting our way of life.  At that point, there will be a lot of people angry with the climate change deniers who hold so much sway on the Republican Party.