White ash results from the complete combustion of surface fuels, making it a logically simple retrospective indicator of surface fuel consumption. However, the strength of this relationship has been neither tested nor adequately demonstrated with field measurements.
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.
Stand-level spatial pattern influences key aspects of resilience and ecosystem function such as disturbance behavior, regeneration, snow retention, and habitat quality in frequent-fire pine and mixed-conifer forests.
This guide describes the benefits, opportunities, and trade-offs concerning fuel treatments in the dry mixed conifer forests of northern California and the Klamath Mountains, Pacific Northwest Interior, northern and central Rocky Mountains, and Utah.
Three series of photographs display a range of natural conditions and fuel loadings for sagebrush-steppe types that are ecotonal with grasses, western juniper, and ponderosa pine in eastern Oregon, and one series of photographs displays a range of natural conditions and fuel loadings for northern spotted owl nesting habitat in forest types in Washington and Oregon.
Principal findings of the National Fire and Fire Surrogate (FFS) study are presented in an annotated bibliography and summarized in tabular form by site, discipline (ecosystem component), treatment type, and major theme.
Using forests to sequester carbon in response to anthropogenically induced climate change is being considered across the globe. A recent U.S. executive order mandated that all federal agencies account for sequestration and emissions of greenhouse gases, highlighting the importance of understanding how forest carbon stocks are influenced by wildfire.
Reducing stand density is often used as a tool for mitigating the risk of high-intensity crown fires. However, concern has been expressed that opening stands might lead to greater drying of surface fuels, contributing to increased fire risk. The objective of this study was to determine whether woody fuel moisture differed between unthinned and thinned mixed-conifer stands.
Mechanical mastication is increasingly used as a wildland fuel treatment, reducing standing trees and shrubs to compacted fuelbeds of fractured woody fuels. One major shortcoming in our understanding of these fuelbeds is how particle fracturing influences moisture gain or loss, a primary determinant of fire behaviour.
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.