Research Database
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7
Smoldering of Wood: Effects of Wind and Fuel Geometry
Year: 2024
Large and downed woody fuels remaining behind a wildfire’s flame front tend to burn in a smoldering regime, producing large quantities of toxic gases and particulate emissions, which deteriorates air quality and compromises human health. Smoldering burning rates are affected by fuel type and size, the amount of oxygen reaching the surface, and heat losses to the surroundings. An external wind has the dual effects of bringing fresh oxidizer to the fuel surface and porous interior, while at the same time enhancing convective cooling. In this work, a series of experiments were conducted on…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fuel types misrepresent forest structure and composition in interior British Columbia: a way forward
Year: 2024
A clear understanding of the connectivity, structure, and composition of wildland fuels is essential for effective wildfire management. However, fuel typing and mapping are challenging owing to a broad diversity of fuel conditions and their spatial and temporal heterogeneity. In Canada, fuel types and potential fire behavior are characterized using the Fire Behavior Prediction (FBP) System, which uses an association approach to categorize vegetation into 16 fuel types based on stand structure and composition. In British Columbia (BC), provincial and national FBP System fuel type maps are…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Forest thinning and prescribed burning treatments reduce wildfire severity and buffer the impacts of severe fire weather
Year: 2024
BackgroundThe capacity of forest fuel treatments to moderate the behavior and severity of subsequent wildfires depends on weather and fuel conditions at the time of burning. However, in-depth evaluations of how treatments perform are limited because encounters between wildfires and areas with extensive pre-fire data are rare. Here, we took advantage of a 1200-ha randomized and replicated experiment that burned almost entirely in a subsequent wildfire under a wide range of weather conditions. We compared the impacts of four fuel treatments on fire severity, including two thin-only, a thin-burn…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The impacts of rising vapour pressure deficit in natural and managed ecosystems
Year: 2024
An exponential rise in the atmospheric vapour pressure deficit (VPD) is among the most consequential impacts of climate change in terrestrial ecosystems. Rising VPD has negative and cascading effects on nearly all aspects of plant function including photosynthesis, water status, growth and survival. These responses are exacerbated by land–atmosphere interactions that couple VPD to soil water and govern the evolution of drought, affecting a range of ecosystem services including carbon uptake, biodiversity, the provisioning of water resources and crop yields. However, despite the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Forest fire management, funding dynamics, and research in the burning frontier: A comprehensive review
Year: 2024
We indexed 8,970 scientific publications on forest fires in order to bridge the gap between research and policy discussions on forest fires. Journal articles and conference papers dominated the literature, with an emphasis on environmental science, agricultural and biological sciences, earth and planetary sciences, engineering, and computer science. Research in the field of fire has historically focused on terms such as "Forest Fire”, “Wildfire", and “Deforestation", but recent trends have highlighted terms such as "MODIS," "Artificial Intelligence," "Algorithm," "Satellite Data," and "…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Multiple social and environmental factors affect wildland fire response of full or less-than-full suppression
Year: 2024
Wildland fire incident commanders make wildfire response decisions within an increasingly complex socio-environmental context. Threats to human safety and property, along with public pressures and agency cultures, often lead commanders to emphasize full suppression. However, commanders may use less-than-full suppression to enhance responder safety, reduce firefighting costs, and encourage beneficial effects of fire. This study asks: what management, socioeconomic, environmental, and fire behavior characteristics are associated with full suppression and the less-than-full suppression methods…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Centering socioecological connections to collaboratively manage post- fire vegetation shifts
Year: 2024
Climate change is altering fire regimes and post-fire conditions, contributing to relatively rapid transformation of landscapes across the western US. Studies are increasingly documenting post-fire vegetation transitions, particularly from forest to non- forest conditions or from sagebrush to invasive annual grasses. The prevalence of climate-driven, post-fire vegetation transitions is likely to increase…
Publication Type: Journal Article