Research Database
Displaying 81 - 100 of 112
Interval squeeze: altered fire regimes and demographic responses interact to threaten woody species persistence as climate changes
Year: 2015
Projected effects of climate change across many ecosystems globally include more frequent disturbance byfire and reduced plant growth due to warmer (and especially drier) conditions. Such changes affect species– particularly fire-intolerant woody plants – by simultaneously reducing recruitment, growth, and survival.Collectively, these mechanisms may narrow the fire interval window compatible with populationpersistence, driving species to extirpation or extinction. We present a conceptual model of these combinedeffects, based on synthesis of the known impacts of climate change and altered fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Recent burning of boreal forests exceeds fire regime limits of the past 10,000 years
Year: 2015
Wildfire activity in boreal forests is anticipated to increase dramatically, with far-reaching ecological and socioeconomic consequences. Paleorecords are indispensible for elucidating boreal fire regime dynamics under changing climate, because fire return intervals and successional cycles in these ecosystems occur over decadal to centennial timescales. We present charcoal records from 14 lakes in the Yukon Flats of interior Alaska, one of the most flammable ecoregions of the boreal forest biome, to infer causes and consequences of fire regime change over the past 10,000 y. Strong…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Modeling wildfire regimes in forest landscapes: abstracting a complex reality
Year: 2015
Fire is a natural disturbance that is nearly ubiquitous in terrestrial ecosystems. The capacity to burn exists virtually wherever vegetation grows. In some forested landscapes, fire is a principal driver of rapid ecosystem change, resetting succession ( McKenzie et al. 1996a ) and changing wildlife habitat (Cushman et al. 2011 ), hydrology ( Feikema et al. 2013 ), element cycles ( Smithwick 2011 ), and even landforms (Pierce et al. 2004 ). In boreal forests, for example, recurring wildfi res are the main cause of compositional and spatial patterns ( Wein and MacLean 1983 ), where a fi re-…
Publication Type: Book Chapter
Traditional Ecological Knowledge: A Model for Modern Fire Management?
Year: 2014
For many thousands of years, aboriginal peoples worldwide used fire to manage landscapes. In NorthAmerica, the frequency and extent of fire (both human caused and natural) were much reduced afterEuropean colonization. Fire exclusion became the policy in the United States for most of the 20thcentury as the country became more settled and industrialized. Past fire exclusion has helped producelandscapes that are highly susceptible to uncharacteristically severe wildfire. An urgent challengefor land managers today is to reduce fire risk through several means, including prescribed burning,without…
Publication Type: Report
Severity of an uncharacteristically large wildfire, the Rim Fire, in forests with relatively restored frequent fire regimes
Year: 2014
The 2013 Rim Fire, originating on Forest Service land, burned into old-growth forests within Yosemite National Park with relatively restored frequent-fire regimes (¡Ý2 predominantly low and moderate severity burns within the last 35 years). Forest structure and fuels data were collected in the field 3-4 years before the fire, providing a rare chance to use pre-existing plot data to analyze fire effects. We used regression tree and random forests analysis to examine the influence of forest structure, fuel, fire history, topographic and weather conditions on observed fire severity in the Rim…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Trust: A planning guide for wildfire agencies & practitioners
Year: 2014
This planning guide is the outcome of an international collaboration of researchers and practitioners/field managers working in communities at risk of wildfire in three countries. Initially, the team of social scientists from Australia, Canada, and the United States utilized the collective research literature to examine factors that influence stakeholder trust. A working draft of this document was shared with experienced agency personnel and community leaders previous to interactive workshops and field visits in each country. This allowed for deliberations of the essential features of…
Publication Type: Report
Landscape restoration of a forest with a historically mixed-severity fire regime: What was the historical landscape pattern of forest and openings?
Year: 2014
Forest management of dry forests in the western US that historically experienced mixed-severity fire regimes is increasingly focused on landscape-scale restoration. However, this restoration effort is constrained by historic range of variation (HRV) reference conditions that lack information concerning the spatial configuration of these forests at intermediate scales (approximately 0.01–100 ha). I used reconstruction methods to map historical (1860) pattern of ponderosa pine-Douglas-fir forests along twenty 1 km long transects on Colorado’s Front Range and compared pre-settlement opening and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Building trust, establishing credibility, and communicating fire issues with the public
Year: 2014
With more people than ever living in the vicinity of the wildland-urban interface, communicating wildland fire management activities and building trust with the public is paramount for safety. Although the time and resources it takes to build and maintain the public’s trust may seem daunting, it may be one of the most important factors determining the long-term viability of a fire management program. Trust is built over time through personal relationships with citizens and communities and also by demonstrating competence and establishing credibility. When trust and confidence have been…
Publication Type: Report
Climate, fire size, and biophysical setting control fire severity and spatial pattern in the northern Cascade Range, USA
Year: 2014
Warmer and drier climate over the past few decades has brought larger fire sizes and increased annual area burned in forested ecosystems of western North America, and continued increases in annual area burned are expected due to climate change. As warming continues, fires may also increase in severity and produce larger contiguous patches of severely burned areas. We used remotely sensed burn-severity data from 125 fires in the northern Cascade Range of Washington, USA, to explore relationships between fire size, severity, and the spatial pattern of severity. We examined relationships between…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Graduate Research Innovation Awards Encourage Young Scientists to Ask Bold Questions
Year: 2014
The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP), in partnership with the Association for Fire Ecology,offers Graduate Research Innovation (GRIN) awards yearly to a handful of top-quality graduatestudents conducting research in fire science. GRIN awards are intended to nurture the next generationof fire and fuels scientists and managers, enhance their professional development,help them become engaged with their community of peers, and equip them to tacklethe fire and fuels management challenges of today and tomorrow.
Publication Type: Report
Understanding evacuation preferences and wildfire mitigations among Northwest Montana residents
Year: 2014
There is currently insufficient information in the United States about residents’ planned evacuation actions during wildfire events, including any intent to remain at or near home during fire events. This is incompatible with growing evidence that select populations at risk from wildfire are considering alternatives to evacuation. This study explores the evacuation preferences of wildland–urban interface residents in Flathead County, Montana, USA. We compare the performance of wildfire mitigation and fuel reduction actions across groups of residents with different primary evacuation…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Taming the Software Chaos: True to its Promise, IFTDSS Eases the Burden of Fuels Treatment Planning - and Does a Lot More Besides
Year: 2014
A key problem reported by the fuels treatment planning community is the difficulty and inefficiency of evaluating and then applying many planning tools and applications. Fuels specialists have struggled to find, load, and learn all the different fuels and fire planning models, not to mention the interface of running, adjusting, and inputting data specific to each model without the ability to easily share inputs/outputs between models. The Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS) was conceived as a way for users to learn one interface, access a variety of data and models…
Publication Type: Report
Building community-agency trust in fire affected communities in Australia and the United States
Year: 2013
As a result of the increasing environmental and social costs of wildfire, fire management agencies face ever-growing complexity in their management decisions and interactions with the public. The success of these interactions with community members may be facilitated through building community–agency trust in the process of providing public input opportunities and community engagement and education activities. Without trust, the public may become frustrated in their interactions with the agency and withhold support for management decisions. This study takes a comparative case approach using…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire, Wildlands, and People: Understanding and preparing for wildfire in the wildland-urban interface
Year: 2013
Fire has historically played a fundamental ecological role in many of America’s wildland areas. However, the rising number of homes in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), associated impacts on lives and property from wildfire, and escalating costs of wildfire management have led to an urgent need for communities to become "fire-adapted." We present maps of the conterminous United States that illustrate historical natural fire regimes, the wildland-urban interface, and the number and location of structures burned since 1999. We outline a sampler of actions, programs, and community planning and…
Publication Type: Report
Fire regimes of quaking aspen in the Mountain West
Year: 2013
Quaking aspen, the most widespread tree species in North America, reproduces primarily by resprouting from roots. In some stands, mortality from fire encourages sprouting and prevents conifers from eventually replacing aspen. In other areas, aspen can form stable communities that do not require fire to regenerate or persist. USGS fire ecologist Doug Shinneman and colleagues reviewed literature about aspen populations and fire, summarized research findings, and suggested a classification system for aspen across the western mountainous United States. The scientists proposed five aspen “fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Ecological effects of alternative fuel-reduction treatments: highlights of the National Fire and Fire Surrogate study (FSS)
Year: 2012
The 12-site National Fire and Fire Surrogate study (FFS) was a multivariate experiment that evaluated ecological consequences of alternative fuel-reduction treatments in seasonally dry forests of the US. Each site was a replicated experiment with a common design that compared an un-manipulated control, prescribed fire, mechanical and mechanical + fire treatments. Variables within the vegetation, fuelbed, forest floor and soil, bark beetles, tree diseases and wildlife were measured in 10-ha stands, and ecological response was compared among treatments at the site level, and across sites, to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Drought-Driven Disturbance History Characterizes a Southern Rocky Mountain Subalpine Forest
Year: 2012
The view that subalpine forest vegetation dynamics in western North America are "driven" by a particular disturbance type (i.e. fire) has shaped our understanding of their disturbance regimes. In the wake of a recent (1990s) landscape-extent spruce beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis Kirby) outbreak in the southern Rocky Mountains, we re-examined the temporal continuity in disturbance types and interactions and the possible role of drought on their occurrence by reconstructing antecedent disturbances for 11 sites across the Markagunt Plateau, southern Utah, USA. Multiple consistent lines of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Importance of Framing for Communicating Risk and Managing Forest Health
Year: 2012
Despite the importance of effective communication about forest and fuel management, little is known about how best to frame information to facilitate public understanding and increase support. The results presented here indicate that framing a fuel management plan as necessary to restore "lost" forest health (as opposed to maintaining or improving forest health) will increase the willingness of individuals to support options that pose some likelihood of failure (i.e. risk). Strategic framing of communication for public audiences is necessary because of the common biases in judgment that can…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Long-term perspective on wildfires in the western USA
Year: 2012
Understanding the causes and consequences of wildfires in forests of the western United States requires integrated information about fire, climate changes, and human activity on multiple temporal scales. We use sedimentary charcoal accumulation rates to construct long-term variations in fire during the past 3,000 y in the American West and compare this record to independent firehistory data from historical records and fire scars. There has been a slight decline in burning over the past 3,000 y, with the lowest levels attained during the 20th century and during the Little Ice Age (LIA, ca.…
Publication Type: Report