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.
We assessed the effectiveness of forest fuel thinning projects that explicitly removed surface and ladder fuels (all but one were combined mechanical and prescribed fire/pile burn prescriptions) in reducing fire severity and tree mortality in 12 forest fires that burned in eastern and southern California between 2005 and 2011.
We examined the effects of three early season (spring) prescribed fires on burn severity patterns of summer wildfires that occurred 1–3 years post- treatment in a mixed conifer forest in central Idaho. Wildfire and prescribed fire burn severities were estimated as the difference in normalized burn ratio (dNBR) using Landsat imagery.
In temperate conifer forests of the Western USA, there is active debate whether fuels reduction treatments and bioenergy production result in decreased carbon emissions and increased carbon sequestration compared to a no-action alternative.
The interaction of fires, where one fire burns into another recently burned area, is receiving increased attention from scientists and land managers wishing to describe the role of fire scars in affecting landscape pattern and future fire spread.
During periods with epidemic mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins) populations in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. ex Loud. var. latifolia Engelm.) forests, large amounts of tree foliage are thought to undergo changes in moisture content and chemistry brought about by tree decline and death. However, many of the presumed changes have yet to be quantified.
The current conditions of many seasonally dry forests in the western and southern United States, especially those that once experienced low- to moderate-intensity fire regimes, leave them uncharacteristically susceptible to high-severity wildfire.
Human land use practices, altered climates, and shifting forest and fire management policies have increased the frequency of large wildfires several-fold. Mitigation of potential fire behaviour and fire severity have increasingly been attempted through pre-fire alteration of wildland fuels using mechanical treatments and prescribed fires.
Previous studies have debated the flammability of young regenerating stands, especially those in a matrix of mature forest, and no consensus has emerged as to whether young stands are inherently prone to highseverity wildfire.
Allometric equations, which express biomass as a function of tree size, are often used to estimate the amount of fuel in a site’s canopy. Most managers assume that one allometric equation per species is sufficient, or that any error introduced by extrapolation is irrelevant.