During the past two decades, land managers and community leaders in the West have adopted sustainable land management methods to make forests healthier, and to maintain profitable local businesses that are beneficial to their communities.
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.
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.
Fire has historically played a fundamental ecological role in many of America’s wildland areas.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Over the past decade, a growing body of research has been conducted on the human dimensions of wildland fire.