Research Database
Displaying 241 - 250 of 250
Topographic Variation in Structure of Mixed-Conifer Forests Under an Active-Fire Regime
Year: 2012
Management efforts to promote forest resiliency as climate changes have often used historical forest structure and composition to provide general guidance for fuels reduction and forest restoration treatments. However, it has been difficult to identify what stand conditions might be fire and drought resilient because historical data and reconstruction studies are generally limited to accurate estimates only of large, live tree density and composition. Other stand features such as smaller tree densities, dead wood, understory structure, regeneration, and fuel loads have been difficult to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Drivers of Effectiveness of Prescribed Fire Treatment
Year: 2012
Prescribed burning for fuel reduction is a major strategy for reducing the risk from unplanned fire. Although there are theoretical studies suggesting that prescribed fire has a strong negative influence on the subsequent area of unplanned fire (so-called leverage), many empirical studies find a more modest influence. Here, I develop a series of simulations to explore the landscape drivers of leverage. Leverage declines with treatment level in a nonlinear, “decay” relationship, implying diminishing effectiveness. The spatial configuration of the prescribed fire treatment has a major effect:…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A Review of Recent Advances in Risk Analysis for Wildfire Management
Year: 2012
Risk analysis evolved out of the need to make decisions concerning highly stochastic events, and is well suited to analyse the timing, location and potential effects of wildfires. Over the past 10 years, the application of risk analysis to wildland fire management has seen steady growth with new risk-based analytical tools that support a wide range of fire and fuels management planning scales from individual incidents to national, strategic interagency programs. After a brief review of the three components of fire risk – likelihood, intensity and effects – this paper reviews recent advances…
Publication Type: Journal Article
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
Fire as a restoration tool: A decision framework for predicting the control or enhancement of plants using fire
Year: 2010
Wildfires change plant communities by reducing dominance of some species while enhancing the abundance of others. Detailed habitat-specific models have been developed to predict plant responses to fire, but these models generally ignore the breadth of fire regime characteristics that can influence plant survival such as the degree and duration of exposure to lethal temperatures. We provide a decision framework that integrates fire regime components, plant growth form, and survival attributes to predict how plants will respond to fires and how fires can be prescribed to enhance the likelihood…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Synthesis of Knowledge on the Effects of Fire and Fire Surrogates on Wildlife in U.S. Dry Forests
Year: 2009
Dry forests throughout the United States are fire-dependent ecosystems, and much attention has been given to restoring their ecological function. As such, land managers often are tasked with reintroducing fire via prescribed fire, wildland fire use, and fire-surrogate treatments such as thinning and mastication. During planning, managers frequently are expected to anticipate effects of management actions on wildlife species. This document represents a synthesis of existing knowledge on wildlife responses to fire and fire-surrogate treatments, presented in a useful, management-relevant format…
Publication Type: Report
The Effect of Wildland Fire on Aquatic Ecosystems in the Western USA
Year: 2003
The workshop on the Effects of Wildland Fire on Aquatic Ecosystems in the Western USA was convened in Boise, Idaho, USA in April 2002 to synthesize the emerging science and discussion relevant to such solutions. The organizing committee invited the authors in this special issue of Forest Ecology and Management to present new work or synthesize the current understanding (or lack of it) regarding the role of disturbance, fire, or fire-related management for aquatic populations, communities, or habitats and the physical and biological processes that maintain them. Scientists and managers…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Jurisdictional decision-making about building codes for resiliency and sustainability post-fire
Year:
The increasing frequency and size of wildfires across the U.S. motivates the growing need to identify how affected communities can rebuild sustainably and resiliently. This study examines the jurisdictional decision-making process surrounding one important class of sustainability and resiliency decisions, focusing on energy and wildfire building codes for housing reconstruction. Through 22 interviews with staff and elected officials in three jurisdictions impacted by Colorado's Marshall Fire, we identify factors influencing decisions. Code decisions varied across jurisdictions and, in some…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Do wood-boring beetles influence the flammability of deadwood?
Year:
Global warming increases the risk of wildfire and insect outbreaks, potentially reducing the carbon storage function of coarse woody debris (CWD). There is an increasing focus on the interactive effects of wildfire and insect infestation on forest carbon, but the impact of wood-boring beetle tunnels via their effect on the flammability of deadwood remains unexplored. We hypothesized that the presence of beetle holes, at natural densities, can affect its flammability positively through increased surface area and enhanced oxygen availability in the wood. To test this, wood-boring beetle holes…
Publication Type: Journal Article