Research Database
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6
Changes in fire behavior caused by fire exclusion and fuel build-up vary with topography in California montane forests, USA
Year: 2022
Wildfire sizes and proportions burned with high severity effects are increasing in seasonally dry forests, especially in the western USA. A critical need in efforts to restore or maintain these forest ecosystems is to determine where fuel build-up caused by fire exclusion reaches thresholds that compromise resilience to fire. Empirical studies identifying drivers of fire severity patterns in actual wildfires can be confounded by co-variation of vegetation and topography and the stochastic effects of weather and rarely consider long-term changes in fuel caused by fire exclusion. To overcome…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Extreme fire spread events and area burned under recent and future climate in the western USA
Year: 2022
Aim: Wildfire activity in recent years is notable not only for an expansion of total area burned but also for large, single-day fire spread events that pose challenges to ecological systems and human communities. Our objectives were to gain new insight into the relationships between extreme single-day fire spread events, annual area burned, and fire season climate and to predict changes under future warming. Location: Fire-prone regions of the western USA. Time period: 2002–2020; a future +2°C scenario. Methods: We used a satellite-derived dataset of daily fire spread events and gridded…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Towards improving wildland firefighter situational awareness through daily fire behaviour risk assessments in the US Northern Rockies and Northern Great Basin
Year: 2017
Wildland firefighters must assess potential fire behaviour in order to develop appropriate strategies and tactics that will safely meet objectives. Fire danger indices integrate surface weather conditions to quantify potential variations in fire spread rates and intensities and therefore should closely relate to observed fire behaviour. These indices could better inform fire management decisions if they were linked directly to observed fire behaviour. Here, we present a simple framework for relating fire danger indices to observed categorical wildland fire behaviour. Ordinal logistic…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Spatially explicit measurements of forest structure and fire behavior following restoration treatments in dry forests
Year: 2017
Restoration treatments in dry forests of the western US often attempt silvicultural practices to restore the historical characteristics of forest structure and fire behavior. However, it is suggested that a reliance on non-spatial metrics of forest stand structure, along with the use of wildland fire behavior models that lack the ability to handle complex structures, may lead to uncharacteristically homogeneous rather than heterogeneous forest structures following restoration. In our study, we used spatially explicit forest inventory data and a physics based fire behavior model to investigate…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire Science Core Curriculum
Year: 2017
This curriculum is designed to teach the basics of fire to non-fire-professional community members, including instructors and landowners, such as ranchers and farmers. The goal is to reduce risk and fire hazard through education and understanding.
Publication Type: Report
Sustainability and wildland fire: The origins of Forest Service Wildland Fire Research
Year: 2017
On June 1, 2015, the Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Branch of Research. Established in 1915 to centralize and elevate the pursuit of research throughout the agency, the Branch of Research focused on everything from silvicultural investigations conducted by the experiment stations to industrial studies and wood product improvement at the Madison, WI, Forest Products Laboratory. From its beginning, the branch oversaw ongoing research designed to develop insights, methods, and technologies to help foresters and land…
Publication Type: Report