We present studies of the effects of vortex-dominated fluid flows on the dynamics of the oscillatory or excitable Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction. The results of these experiments have applications for advection-reaction-diffusion dynamics in a wide range of systems including microfluidic chemical reactors, cellular-scale processes in biological systems, and blooms of phytoplankton in the oceans. Much of our work is focused on understanding how reaction fronts propagate in fluid flows. To analyze and predict the behavior of the fronts, we generalize tools developed to describe passive...