Despite major advances in numerical weather prediction, few resources exist to forecast wildland fire danger conditions to support operational fire management decisions and community early-warning systems.
Until Euro-American colonization, Indigenous people used fire to modify eco-cultural systems, developing robust Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Since 1980, wildfire activity has increased due to fire suppression and climate change. In 2017, in Waterton Lakes National Park, AB, the Kenow wildfire burned 19,303 ha, exhibiting extreme fire behavior.
Prescribed fires in forest ecosystems can negatively impact human health and safety by transporting smoke downwind into nearby communities. Smoke transport to communities is known to occur around Bend, Oregon, United States of America (USA), where burning at the wildland–urban interface in the Deschutes National Forest resulted in smoke intrusions into populated areas.
Before the advent of intensive forest management and fire suppression, western North American forests exhibited a naturally occurring resistance and resilience to wildfires and other disturbances. Resilience, which encompasses resistance, reflects the amount of disruption an ecosystem can withstand before its structure or organization qualitatively shift to a different basin of attraction.
In this study, we aim to advance the optimization of daily large fire containment strategies for ground-based suppression resources by leveraging fire risk assessment results commonly used by fire managers in the western USA.
To develop effective long-term strategies, natural resource managers need to account for the projected effects of climate change as well as the uncertainty inherent in those projec- tions. Vegetation models are one important source of projected climate effects.
Boundary organizations facilitate two-way, sustained interaction and communication between research and practitioner spheres, deliver existing science, and develop new, actionable scientific information to address emerging social–ecological questions applicable to decision-making.
Background Mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae Hopkins; MPB), a bark beetle native to western North America, has caused vast areas of tree mortality over the last several decades. The majority of this mortality has been in lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Douglas ex Loudon) forests and has heightened concerns over the potential for extreme fire behavior across large landscapes.
Background: Few studies have examined post-fire vegetation recovery in temperate forest ecosystems with Landsat time series analysis.
There is broad recognition that fire management in the United States must fundamentally change and depart from practices that have led to an over-emphasis on suppression and limited the presence of fire in forested ecosystems.