Research Database
Displaying 121 - 140 of 252
Disturbance and Sustainability in Forests of the Western United States
Year: 2021
This report assesses recent forest disturbance in the Western United States and discusses implications for sustainability. Individual chapters focus on fire, drought, insects, disease, invasive plants, and socioeconomic impacts. Disturbance data came from a variety of sources, including the Forest Inventory and Analysis program, Forest Health Protection, and the National Interagency Fire Center. Disturbance trends with the potential to affect forest sustainability include altera-tions in fire regimes, periods of drought in some parts of the region, and increases in invasive plants, insects,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Evidence for widespread changes in the structure, composition, and fire regimes of western North American forests
Year: 2021
Implementation of wildfire- and climate-adaptation strategies in seasonally dry forests of western North America is impeded by numerous constraints and uncertainties. After more than a century of resource and land use change, some question the need for proactive management, particularly given novel social, ecological, and climatic conditions. To address this question, we first provide a framework for assessing changes in landscape conditions and fire regimes. Using this framework, we then evaluate evidence of change and lack of change in contemporary conditions relative to those maintained by…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Stop going around in circles: towards a reconceptualisation of disaster risk management phases
Year: 2021
Purpose The way that disasters are managed, or indeed mis-managed, is often represented diagrammatically as a “disaster cycle”. The cyclical aspects of the disaster (risk) management concept, comprised of numerous operational phases, have, in recent years, been criticised for conceptualising and representing disasters in an overly simplistic way that typically starts with a disaster “event” – and subsequently leads onto yet another disaster. Such cyclical thinking has been proven to not be very useful for the complexities associated with understanding disasters and their risks. This paper…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Planning for future fire: Scenario analysis of an accelerated fuel reduction plan for the western United States
Year: 2021
Recent fire seasons brought a new fire reality to the western US, and motivated federal agencies to explore scenarios for augmenting current fuel management and forest restoration in areas where fires might threatencritical resources and developed areas. To support this effort, we modeled the scheduling of an accelerated forest and fuel management scenario on 76 western US national forests. Specifically, we modeled a 10-year ramp up of current forest and fuel management that targeted the source of wildfire exposure to developed areas andsimulated treatment in areas that accounted for 77% of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Climate and wildfire adaptation of inland Northwest US forests
Year: 2021
After a century of intensive logging, federal forest management policies were developed in the 1990s to protect remaining large trees and old forests in the western US. Today, due to rapidly changing ecological conditions, new threats and uncertainties, and scientific advancements, some policy provisions are being re-evaluated in interior Oregon and Washington. The case for re- evaluation is clearest where small- to large-sized, immature, fast-growing, fire-intolerant trees have filled in forests after both a long period of fire exclusion and the harvest of large, old trees. This infilling…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire and climate change adaptation of western North American forests: a case for intentional management
Year: 2021
Forest landscapes across western North America (wNA) have experienced extensive changes over the last two centuries, while climatic warming has become a global reality over the last four decades. Resulting interactions between historical increases in forested area and density and recent rapid warming, increasing insect mortality, and wildfire burned areas, are now leading to substantial abrupt landscape alterations. These outcomes are forcing forest planners and managers to identify strategies that can modify future outcomes that are ecologically and/or socially undesirable. Past forest…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Estimating Price Dynamics in the Aftermath of Forest Disturbances: The Biscuit Fire in Southwest Oregon
Year: 2020
Catastrophic forest disturbances, such as wildfires, insect outbreaks, and hurricanes, have become more frequent in recent decades. Such disturbances can create supply disruptions in regional timber markets, with potentially significant short-run and long-run price effects. We review the time-series intervention models that have been used to analyze the impacts of forest disturbances. We apply the intervention models to investigate the market effects of the Biscuit Fire that burned nearly 500,000 acres (202,000 hectares) of forest land in southwest Oregon in 2002, thus creating an unexpected…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire decision support tools: an exploratory study of use in the United States
Year: 2020
In the United States, many decision support tools exist to provide fire managers with weather and fire behaviour information to inform and facilitate risk-based decision-making. Relatively little is known about how managers use these tools in the field and when and how they may serve to influence decisions. To address this gap, we conducted exploratory interviews with 27 wildfire management and fire weather professionals across the United States. Results reveal that barriers to the use of decision support tools are structural and social. Specifically, fire weather and behaviour models may not…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Invasive grasses: A new perfect storm for forested ecosystems?
Year: 2020
Exotic grasses are a widespread set of invasive species that are notable for their ability to significantly alter key aspects of ecosystem function. Understanding the role and importance of these invaders in forested landscapes has been limited but is now rising, as grasses from Eurasia and Africa continue to spread through ecosystems of the Americas, Australia, and many Pacific islands, where they threaten biodiversity and alter various aspects of the fire regime. The ecological, social and economic impacts of the grass-fire cycle associated with species such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum)…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Effects of post-fire management on dead woody fuel dynamics and stand structure in a severely burned mixed-conifer forest, in northeastern Washington State, USA
Year: 2020
The increasing amount of high-severity wildfire in historical low and mixed-severity fire regimes in western US forests has created a need to better understand the ecological effects of different post fire management approaches. For three different salvage prescriptions, we quantified change in stand structural metrics (snag densities and snag basal areas), dead woody fuel loadings, tree regeneration survival, and percentage change in vegetation cover before and after post-fire logging 1 year after the 2015 Stickpin Wildfire on the Colville National Forest in northeastern Washington State, USA. In a…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Insights and suggestions for certified prescribed burn manager programs
Year: 2020
Prescribed burning is an effective method to reduce hazardous fuels and restore ecological conditions across a variety of ecosystems. Twenty-one states have laws or policies that direct state agencies to oversee formal training programs to certify individuals in safe burning techniques. Fifteen of these states have active certified prescribed burn manager programs (CPBM). Michigan and Oregon did not implement certification programs due to lack of funding, and California, Minnesota, Washington, and West Virginia are currently developing CPBM programs. The Washington State Legislature charged…
Publication Type: Report
Crowded and Thirsty: Fire exclusion leads to greater drought sensitivity in mixed-conifer forests
Year: 2020
Wildfires were a frequent source of disturbance in forests of the Western United States prior to Euro-American settlement. Following a series of catastrophic wildfires in the Northern Rockies in 1910, the U.S. Forest Service adopted a broad wildfire suppression policy that has resulted in forests thick with small trees. These crowded trees compete for nutrients and water and experience increased drought stress in summer.In recent decades, many trees have died following drought, bark beetle outbreaks, and severe wildfire. A link between this mortality and increasing susceptibility to drought…
Publication Type: Report
Disturbance refugia within mosaics of forest fire, drought, and insect outbreaks
Year: 2020
Disturbance refugia – locations that experience less severe or frequent disturbances than the surrounding landscape – provide a framework to highlight not only where and why these biological legacies persist as adjacent areas change but also the value of those legacies in sustaining biodiversity. Recent studies of disturbance refugia in forest ecosystems have focused primarily on fire, with a growing recognition of important applications to land management. Given the wide range of disturbance processes in forests, developing a broader understanding of disturbance refugia is important for…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Severe Fire Danger Index: A Forecastable Metric to Inform Firefighter and Community Wildfire Risk Management
Year: 2019
Despite major advances in numerical weather prediction, few resources exist to forecast wildland fire danger conditions to support operational fire management decisions and community early-warning systems. Here we present the development and evaluation of a spatial fire danger index that can be used to assess historical events, forecast extreme fire danger, and communicate those conditions to both firefighters and the public. It uses two United States National Fire Danger Rating System indices that are related to fire intensity and spread potential. These indices are normalized, combined, and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire and Forest Management in Montane Forests of the Northwestern States and California, USA
Year: 2019
We reviewed forest management in the mountainous regions of several northwestern states and California in the United States and how it has impacted current issues facing these forests. We focused on the large-scale activities like fire suppression and logging which resulted in landscape level changes. We divided the region into two main forests types; wet, like the forests in the Pacific Northwest, and dry, like the forests in the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges. In the wet forests, the history of intensive logging shaped the current forest structure, while fire suppression played a more…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Policy tools to address scale mismatches: insights from U.S. forest governance
Year: 2019
Recent literature has highlighted the growing array of scale mismatches in environmental governance and offered policy design principles for improved governance approaches. A next step is to develop our understanding of specific policy tools that can address scale mismatches. This paper reviews the range and importance of scale-related challenges and solutions in environmental governance, situating this discussion in the context of forest governance. We then tackle the matter of policy tools to address scale mismatches, by synthesizing findings from recent policy research on two…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Prescribed fire regimes subtly alter ponderosa pine forest plant community structure
Year: 2019
Prescribed fire is an active management tool used to address wildfire hazard and ecological concerns associated with fire exclusion and suppression over the past century. Despite widespread application in the United States, there is considerable inconsistency and lack of information regarding the extent to which specific outcomes are achieved and under what prescribed fire regimes, particularly in regard to ecological goals related to plant community structure. We quantify differences and patterns in plant functional group abundance, species richness and diversity, and other key forest…
Publication Type: Journal Article
To Masticate or Not: Useful Tips for Treating Forest, Woodland, and Shrubland Vegetation
Year: 2019
Forest managers use mastication to grind or shed vegetation to remove competition, prepare a site for natural or artificial regeneration, or release sapling-sized trees; or they use mastication to convert ladder fuels to surface fuels and enhance decomposition of biomass. However, determining the best mastication configuration within the context of management objectives and site limitations is challenging. This report synthesizes our current knowledge on mastication as a forest management tool. We found that excavators, skid steers, and tractors can all be carrier machines and different types…
Publication Type: Report
A System Dynamics Model Examining Alternative Wildfire Response Policies
Year: 2019
In this paper, we develop a systems dynamics model of a coupled human and natural fire-prone system to evaluate changes in wildfire response policy. A primary motivation is exploring the implications of expanding the pace and scale of using wildfires as a forest restoration tool. We implement a model of a forested system composed of multiple successional classes, each with different structural characteristics and propensities for burning at high severity. We then simulate a range of alternative wildfire response policies, which are defined as the combination of a target burn rate (or…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Cost-effective fuel treatment planning: a theoretical justification and case study
Year: 2019
Modelling the spatial prioritisation of fuel treatments and their net effect on values at risk is an important area for applied work as economic damages from wildfire continue to grow. We model and demonstrate a cost-effective fuel treatment planning algorithm using two ecosystem services as benefits for which fuel treatments are prioritised. We create a surface of expected fuel treatment costs to incorporate the heterogeneity in factors affecting the revenue and costs of fuel treatments, and then prioritise treatments based on a cost-effectiveness ratio to maximise the averted loss of…
Publication Type: Journal Article