You identified two good articles that need help: hydrophobic soils and taiga. The taiga fire section is very well written but you are very correct that it relies on material all from Rowe almost 50 years old. There is LOTS of good summaries of the fire regime in Alaska and Canada; but not so much for Russia.
If you want to work on the hydrophobic soil article, you should be able to find some good materials, too. Another student is working on the abiotic effects section of the Fire ecology article, but that won't have too much attention on hydrophobic soils.
In both cases I suggest copying the section of the taiga article, or the entire hydrophobic soil article, into your sandbox. Copy from the raw text editor so the references go with the article. Thanks,
