Severe drought and explosive forest fires have become a normal feature of life for communities of people living in the western United States. Tree species have evolved adaptations to survive and grow even during times of drought and when fires burn. However, increasingly intense drought and severe fires are pushing trees to their limits. A major challenge for forest ecologists is to predict how western forests will change, but it is currently not known which species will thrive or decline. This research will identify the key adaptations that will help determine the fate of western tree species by measuring how species tolerate drought and fire. The researchers will then predict how forests could change over time. Teaching resources for K-12 will be made publicly available through the Global Vegetation Project to demonstrate the impacts of drought and fire on western forests. This research provides a glimpse into the future to help people prepare for how western forests will respond to more fire and less water and provide guidance to forest managers that steward our nation’s forest resources. Drought and fire are driving widespread tree mortality and limiting tree recruitment in forests across the western United States. Forest ecologists do not fully understand which combinations of drought and fire adaptations will drive changes in tree species abundances in the future, and large gaps in existing functional trait databases prevent researchers from leveraging new analytical