Research Database
Displaying 61 - 77 of 77
The merits of prescribed fire outweigh potential carbon emission effects
Year: 2013
A White Paper developed by Association for Fire Ecology, International Association of Wildland Fire, Tall Timbers Research Station, and The Nature Conservancy.
Publication Type: Report
A Land Manager's Guide for Creating Fire-resistant Forests
Year: 2013
This publication provides an overview of how various silvicultural treatments affectfuel and fire behavior, and how to create fire-resistant forests. In properlytreated, fire-resistant forests, fire intensity is reduced and overstory treesare more likely to survive than in untreated forests. Fire-resistant forestsare not “fireproof” – under the right conditions, any forest will burn. Much ofwhat we present here is pertinent to the drier forests of the Pacific Northwest,which have become extremely dense and fire prone
Publication Type: Report
Overcoming barriers to firewise actions by residents
Year: 2013
Encouraging the public to take action (e.g., creating defensible space) that can reduce the likelihood of wildfire damage and decrease the likelihood of injury is a common approach to increasing wildfire safety and damage mitigation. This study was designed to improve our understanding of both individual and community actions that homeowners currently do or might take to protect their home or property, and the barriers that impede homeowners from completing firewise treatments to their home or property.
Publication Type: Report
Fuel Treatments and Fire Severity: A Meta-Analysis
Year: 2013
We employed meta-analysis and information theory to synthesize findings reported in the literature on the effects of fuel treatments on subsequent fire intensity and severity. Data were compiled from 19 publications that reported observed fire responses from 62 treated versus untreated contrasts. Effect sizes varied widely and the most informative grouping of studies distinguished three vegetation types and three types of fuel treatment. The resultant meta-analytic model is highly significant (p<0.001) and explains 78% of the variability in reported observations of fuel treatment…
Publication Type: Report
Social Science at the WUI: A Compendium of Research Results to Create Fire-Adapted Communities
Year: 2013
Over the past decade, a growing body of research has been conducted on the human dimensions of wildland fire. Building on a relatively small number of foundational studies, this research now addresses a wide range of topics including mitigation activities on private lands, fuels reduction treatments on public land, community impacts and resident behaviors during fire, acceptance of approaches to postfire restoration and recovery, and fire management policy and decisionmaking. As this research has matured, there has been a recognition of the need to examine the full body of resulting…
Publication Type: Report
Crown fire behavior characteristics and prediction in conifer forests: a state-of-knowledge synthesis
Year: 2013
Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) project 09-S-03-1 was undertaken in response to JFSP Project Announcement No. FA-RFA09-0002 with respect to a synthesis on extreme fire behavior or more specifically a review and analysis of the literature dealing with certain features of crown fire behavior in conifer forests in the United States and adjacent regions of Canada. The key findings presented are organized along nine topical areas: types of crown fires; crown fire initiation; crown fire propagation; crown fire rate of spread; crown fire intensity and flame zone characteristics; crown fire area…
Publication Type: Report
Previous Fires Moderate Burn Severity of Subsequent Wildland Fires in Two Large Western US Wilderness Areas
Year: 2013
Wildland fire is an important natural process in many ecosystems. However, fire exclusion has reduced frequency of fire and area burned in many dry forest types, which may affect vegetation structure and composition, and potential fire behavior. In forests of the western U.S., these effects pose a challenge for fire and land managers who seek to restore the ecological process of fire to ecosystems. Recent research suggests that landscapes with unaltered fire regimes are more ‘‘self-regulating’’ than those that have experienced fire-regime shifts; in self-regulating systems, fire size and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
ArcFuels10 System Overview
Year: 2013
Fire behavior modeling and geospatial analyses can provide tremendous insight for land managers as they grapple with the complex problems frequently encountered in wildfire risk assessments and fire and fuels management planning. Fuel management often is a particularly complicated process in which the benefits and potential impacts of fuel treatments need to be demonstrated in the context of land management goals and public expectations. The fuel treatment planning process is complicated by the lack of data assimilation among fire behavior models and weak linkages to geographic information…
Publication Type: Report
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
Restoring and Managing Mixed Conifer Forests in the PNW
Year: 2013
Publication Type: Conference Proceedings
Assessing forest vegetation and fire simulation model performance after the Cold Springs wildfire, Washington, USA
Year: 2013
Given that resource managers rely on computer simulation models when it is difficult or expensive to obtain vital information directly, it is important to evaluate how well a particular model satisfies applications for which it is designed. The Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS) is used widely for forest management in the US, and its scope and complexity continue to increase. This paper focuses on the accuracy of estimates made by the Fire and Fuels Extension (FFE-FVS) predictions through comparisons between model outputs and measured post-fire conditions for the Cold Springs wildfire and on…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Estimating Critical Climate - Driven Thresholds in Landscape Dynamics Using Spatial Simulation Modeling: Climate Change Tipping Points in Fire Management
Year: 2013
Climate projections for the next 20-50 years forecast higher temperatures and variable precipitation for many landscapes in the western United States. Climate changes may cause or contribute to threshold shifts, or tipping points, where relatively small shifts in climate result in large, abrupt, and persistent changes in landscape patterns and fire regimes. Rather than simulate potential climate-fire interactions using future climate data derived from Global Climate Models (GCMs), we developed sets of progressively warmer and drier or wetter climate scenarios that span and exceed the range of…
Publication Type: Report
Fire For Water: Forest Restoration for Ashland, OR
Year: 2013
The Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project has released “Fire for Water,” a 10-minute video (produced by Jon Schwedler, Darren Borgias and Chris Chambers) on the treatment work being done to protect the city of Ashland’s watershed. Some of the work in this multi-partner collaborative project is being supported by SPER funding, and the NW FLN is one of the co-sponsors of the video. For more information, contact Darren Borgias (dborgias@tnc.org). http://ashland.or.us/SectionIndex.asp?SectionID=503
Publication Type: Report
Pre-wildfire fuel reduction treatments result in more resilient forest structure a decade after wildfire
Year: 2013
Increasing size and severity of wildfires have led to an interest in the effectiveness of forest fuels treatments on reducing fire severity and post-wildfire fuels. Our objective was to contrast stand structure and surface fuel loadings on treated and untreated sites within the 2002 Rodeo-Chediski Fire area. Data from 140 plots on seven paired treated-untreated sites indicated that pre-wildfire treatments reduced fire severity compared with untreated sites. In 2011, coarse woody debris loading (woody material.7.62 cm in diameter) was 257% higher and fine woody debris (woody material,7.62 cm)…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Projected Future Changes in Vegetation in Western North America in the Twenty-First Century
Year: 2013
Rapid and broad-scale forest mortality associated with recent droughts, rising temperature, and insect outbreaks has been observed over western North America (NA). Climate models project additional future warming and increasing drought and water stress for this region. To assess future potential changes in vegetation distributions in western NA, the Community Earth System Model (CESM) coupled with its Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM) was used under the future A2 emissions scenario. To better span uncertainties in future climate, eight sea surface temperature (SST) projections provided…
Publication Type: Journal Article