Research Database
Displaying 201 - 215 of 215
Synthesis of Knowledge of Extreme Fire Behavior: Volume I for Fire Managers
Year: 2011
The National Wildfire Coordinating Group definition of extreme fire behavior (EFB) indicates a level of fire behavior characteristics that ordinarily precludes methods of direct control action. One or more of the following is usually involved: high rate of spread, prolific crowning/spotting, presence of fire whirls, and strong convection column. Predictability is difficult because such fires often exercise some degree of influence on their environment and behave erratically, sometimes dangerously. Alternate terms include “blow up” and “fire storm.” Fire managers examining fires over the last…
Publication Type: Report
Effectiveness of post-fire seeding at the Fitzner-Eberhardt Arid Land Ecology Reserve, Washington
Year: 2011
In August 2007, the Milepost 17 and Wautoma fires burned a combined total of 77,349 acres (31,302 hectares) of the Fitzner-Eberhardt Arid Land Ecology Reserve (ALE), part of the Hanford Reach National Monument administered by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) Mid-Columbia National Wildlife Refuge. In 2008, the USFWS implemented a series of seeding and herbicide treatments to mitigate potential negative consequences of these fires, including mortality of native vegetation, invasion of Bromus tectorum (cheatgrass), and soil erosion. Treatments included combinations of seeding (drill…
Publication Type: Report
Nontribal community recovery from wildfire five years later: The case of the Rodeo-Chediski fire
Year: 2011
Recent literature suggests that natural disasters such as wildfires often have the short-term effect of ‘‘bringing people together’’ while also under some circumstances generating social conflict at the local level. Conflict has been documented particularly when social relations are disembedded by nonlocal entities and there is a perceived loss of local agency. There is less agreement about longer term impacts. We present results of a re-study of a set of communities affected by the largest wildfire in Arizona history. The re-study uses structuration theory to suggest that while local…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Introducing FuelCalc: A New Tool that Helps Turn Static Inventory Data into Actionable Information
Year: 2010
Fuel and fire managers perform fuel treatments to manage and restore ecosystems and protect resources. In order to plan effective fuel treatments that accomplish objectives, managers need to analyze fuel conditions and document the expected fire behavior and fire effects both before and after fuel treatment. To help accomplish these goals, a new software tool named FuelCalc was created. FuelCalc facilitates use of a wide range of inventory data and fuel characteristics to help calculate fuel quantities and qualities to estimate potential fire behavior, fire effects, and smoke production. By…
Publication Type: Report
Prescribed fires as ecological surrogates for wildfires: A stream and riparian perspective
Year: 2010
Forest managers use prescribed fire to reduce wildfire risk and to provide resource benefits, yet little information is available on whether prescribed fires can function as ecological surrogates for wildfire in fire-prone landscapes. Information on impacts and benefits of this management tool on stream and riparian ecosystems is particularly lacking. We used a beyond-BACI (Before, After, Control, Impact) design to investigate the effects of a prescribed fire on a stream ecosystem and compared these findings to similar data collected after wildfire. For 3 years after prescribed fire treatment…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The fire pulse: wildfire stimulates flux of aquatic prey to terrestrial habitats driving increase in riparian consumers
Year: 2010
We investigated the midterm effects of wildfire (in this case, five years after the fire) of varying severity on periphyton, benthic invertebrates, emerging adult aquatic insects, spiders, and bats by comparing unburned sites with those exposed to low severity (riparian vegetation burned but canopy intact) and high severity (canopy completely removed) wildfire. We observed no difference in periphyton chlorophyll a or ash-free dry mass among different burn categories but did observe significantly greater biomass of benthic invertebrates in both high severity burned and unburned reaches versus…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Response of antelope bitterbrush to repeated prescribed burning in Central Oregon ponderosa pine forests
Year: 2009
Antelope bitterbrush is a dominant shrub in many interior ponderosa pine forests in the western United States. How it responds to prescribed fire is not well understood, yet is of considerable concern to wildlife and fire managers alike given its importance as a browse species and as a ladder fuel in these fire-prone forests. We quantified bitterbrush cover, density, and biomass in response to repeated burning in thinned ponderosa pine forests. Low- to moderate-intensity spring burning killed the majority of bitterbrush plants on replicate plots. Moderately rapid recovery of bitterbrush…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Consume 3.0 -- A Software Tool for Computing Fuel Consumption
Year: 2009
Knowing when, where and how fire should be applied is critical for land managers planning to use fire prescriptively for land management goals, or allowing fires ignited naturally to burn. Myriad variables need to be taken into consideration to determine how fire will consume different fuels. Consume, version 3.0 is a user-friendly software that incorporates the Fuel Characteristic Classification System (FCCS) to predict fuel consumption, pollutant emissions, and heat release. A flexible tool, Consume 3.0 makes these calculations based on fuel loadings, fuel moisture and other environmental…
Publication Type: Report
Filling in the Blanks for Prescribed Fire in Shrublands: Developing Information to Support Improved Fire Planning
Year: 2009
By collecting information on fuel loading, fuel consumption, fuel moisture, site conditions and fire weather on fires in a variety of shrubland types, researchers are developing a fuller knowledge of shrubland fire effects. Results are being integrated into the software package CONSUME, a user-friendly software tool for predicting fuel consumption and emissions for fire, fuel and smoke management planning. Shrubland types studied include chamise chaparral in California, big sagebrush in Montana, pine flatwoods in Florida and Georgia, and pitch pine scrub in the New Jersey Pinelands.…
Publication Type: Report
ArcFuels: Integrating Wildfire Models and Risk Analysis into Landscape Fuels Management
Year: 2009
That risk from wildfire continues to grow across the United States is not a new problem. Managing forest fuels in the real world—such as thinning and burning prescriptively—to reduce fuel loads have been used effectively to reduce the risk of severe wildfire. These actions have been helped by a variety of software tools that assist managers in planning and evaluating fuel treatments to ensure they are cost effective in terms of impeding the growth of future large, severe wildfires. While many landscape planning tools do a fine job within the scope of their capabilities, the process of fine…
Publication Type: Report
Ecological Effects of Prescribed Fire Season: A Literature Review and Synthesis for Managers
Year: 2009
Prescribed burning may be conducted at times of the year when fires were infrequent historically, leading to concerns about potential adverse effects on vegetation and wildlife. Historical and prescribed fire regimes for different regions in the continental United States were compared and literature on season of prescribed burning synthesized. In regions and vegetation types where considerable differences in fuel consumption exist among burning seasons, the effects of prescribed fire season appears, for many ecological variables, to be driven more by fire-intensity differences among seasons…
Publication Type: Report
Postfire woodpecker foraging in salvage-logged and unlogged forests of the Sierra Nevada
Year: 2008
In forests, high-severity burn patches — wherein most or all of the trees are killed by fire — often occur within a mosaic of low- and moderate-severity effects. Although there have been several studies of postfire salvage-logging effects on bird species, there have been few studies of effects on bird species associated with high-severity patches in forests that have otherwise burned at lower severities. From 2004 to 2006, we investigated the foraging presence or absence of three woodpecker species, the Black-backed (Picoides arcticus), Hairy (P. villosus), and White-headed (P. albolarvatus)…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Behavior Modification: Tempering Fire at the Landscape Level
Year: 2008
With a history of management choices that have suppressed fire in the West, ecosystems in which fire would play a vital role have developed tremendous fuel loads. As a result, conditions are prime for fires to grow large, escape attack measures, and become catastrophic conflagrations that damage watersheds, forest resources, and homes. With a quiver of treatment options, land managers have successfully used prescribed burning and thinning to modify landscapes at the stand level. But planning treatments to modify fuel build up on a patch of forest is vastly different than planning treatments…
Publication Type: Report
Burned landscapes of southwestern Oregon: what's in it for Northern Spotted Owls?
Year: 2008
Northern spotted owls are known to spend time in areas burned by wildfire, but there has been little scientific investigation of how and why they use these landscapes. A trio of wildfires in southwestern Oregon during the summers of 2001 and 2002 burned through dozens of documented spotted owl territories, providing a rare opportunity to study many important aspects of how these raptors respond to wildfire in dry forest ecosystems. For this project researchers used radio telemetry and demographic surveys to investigate habitat selection, home range size, occupancy, productivity and survival…
Publication Type: Report
Citizen-Agency Interactions in Planning and Decisionmaking After Large Fires
Year: 2007
This report reviews the growing literature on the concept of agency-citizen interactions after large wildfires. Because large wildfires have historically occurred at irregular intervals, research from related fields has been reviewed where appropriate. This issue is particularly salient in the West where excess fuel conditions indicate that the large wildfires occurring in many states are expected to continue to be a major problem for forest managers in the coming years. This review focuses on five major themes that emerge from prior research: contextual considerations, barriers and obstacles…
Publication Type: Government Report