Research Database
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11
Enhancing adaptive capacity for restoring fire-dependent ecosystems: the Fire Learning Network’s Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges
Year: 2015
Prescribed fire is a critical tool for promoting restoration and increasing resilience in fire-adapted ecosystems, but there are barriers to its use, including a shortage of personnel with adequate ecological knowledge and operational expertise to implement prescribed fire across multijurisdictional landscapes. In the United States, recognized needs for both professional development and increased use of fire are not being met, often because of institutional limitations. The Fire Learning Network has been characterized as a multiscalar, collaborative network that works to enhance the adaptive…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Categorizing the social context of the wildland urban interface: Adaptive capacity for wildfire and community "archetypes"
Year: 2015
Understanding the local context that shapes collective response to wildfire risk continues to be a challenge for scientists and policymakers. This study utilizes and expands on a conceptual approach for understanding adaptive capacity to wildfire in a comparison of 18 past case studies. The intent is to determine whether comparison of local social context and community characteristics across cases can identify community "archetypes" that approach wildfire planning and mitigation in consistently different ways. Identification of community archetypes serves as a potential strategy for…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire-Adapted Communities: The Next Step in Wildfire Preparedness in Klamath County
Year: 2015
This is a manual that helps homeowners and neighborhoods prepare their areas and their homes for wildfire. A fire-adapted community is a community located in a fire-prone area that requires little assistance from firefighters during a wildfire. Residents of these communities accept responsibility for living in a high fire-hazard area. They possess the knowledge and skills to prepare their homes and property to survive wildfire; evacuate early, safely and effectively; and survive, if trapped by wildfire.
Publication Type: Report
Before Wildfire Strikes: A Handbook for Homeowners and Communities in Southwest Oregon
Year: 2015
This is a manual that helps homeowners and neighborhoods prepare their areas and their homes for wildfire. A fire-adapted community is a community located in a fire-prone area that requires little assistance from firefighters during a wildfire. Residents of these communities accept responsibility for living in a high fire-hazard area. They possess the knowledge and skills to prepare their homes and property to survive wildfire; evacuate early, safely and effectively; and survive, if trapped by wildfire.
Publication Type: Report
Rebuilding and new housing development after wildfire
Year: 2015
The number of wildland-urban interface communities affected by wildfire is increasing, and both wildfire suppression and losses are costly. However, little is known about post-wildfire response by homeowners and communities after buildings are lost. Our goal was to characterise rebuilding and new development after wildfires across the conterminous United States. We analysed all wildfires in the conterminous USA from 2000 to 2005. We mapped 42 724 buildings, of which 34 836 were present before the fire and survived, 3604 were burned, 2403 were post-fire new development, and 1881 were burned…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Tree mortality from drought, insects, and their interactions in a changing climate
Year: 2015
Climate change is expected to drive increased tree mortality through drought, heat stress, and insect attacks, with manifold impacts on forest ecosystems. Yet, climate-induced tree mortality and biotic disturbance agents are largely absent from process-based ecosystem models. Using data sets from the western USA and associated studies, we present a framework for determining the relative contribution of drought stress, insect attack, and their interactions, which is critical for modeling mortality in future climates. We outline a simple approach that identifies the mechanisms associated with…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Interactions among spruce beetle disturbance, climate change and forest dynamics captured by a forest landscape model
Year: 2015
The risk of bark beetle outbreaks is widely predicted to increase because of a warming climate that accelerates temperature-driven beetle population growth and drought stress that impairs host tree defenses. However, few if any studies have explicitly evaluated climatically enhanced beetle population dynamics in relation to climate-driven changes in forest composition and structure that may alter forest suitability for beetle infestation. We synthesized current understanding of the interactions among climate, spruce beetles (Dendroctonus rufipennis) and forest dynamics to parameterize and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Forest disturbance accelerates thermophilization of understory plant communities
Year: 2015
1. Climate change is likely to shift plant communities towards species from warmer regions, a processtermed ‘thermophilization’. In forests, canopy disturbances such as fire may hasten this processby increasing temperature and moisture stress in the understory, yet little is known about the mechanismsthat might drive such shifts, or the consequences of these processes for plant diversity.2. We sampled understory vegetation across a gradient of disturbance severity from a large-scalenatural experiment created by the factorial combination of forest thinning and wildfire in California.Using…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Native and exotic plant species respond differently to wildfire and prescribed fire as revealed by meta-analysis
Year: 2015
Questions: Wildfire is a natural disturbance that shapes vegetation characteristics worldwide, while prescribed fire is increasingly used to modify vegetation composition and structure. Due to invasion of many ecosystems by exotic species, a concern of land managers is whether wildfire and prescribed fire alter plant communities in favour of exotics. We assessed the global literature describing community-level responses of native and exotic species groups to wildfire and prescribed fire and characterized the geographic and temporal scope of the data to inform research needs. Location:…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Representing climate, disturbance, and vegetation interactions in landscape models
Year: 2015
The prospect of rapidly changing climates over the next century calls for methods to predict their effects on myriad, interactive ecosystem processes. Spatially explicit models that simulate ecosystem dynamics at fine (plant, stand) to coarse (regional, global) scales are indispensable tools for meeting this challenge under a variety of possible futures. A special class of these models, called landscape models (LMs), simulates dynamics at intermediate scales where many critical ecosystem processes interact. The complicated dependencies among climate, disturbance, and vegetation present a…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland fire deficit and surplus in the western United States, 1984-2012
Year: 2015
Wildland fire is an important disturbance agent in the western US and globally. However, the natural role of fire has been disrupted in many regions due to the influence of human activities, which have the potential to either exclude or promote fire, resulting in a "fire deficit" or "fire surplus", respectively. In this study, we developed a model of expected area burned for the western US as a function of climate from 1984 to 2012. We then quantified departures from expected area burned to identify geographic regions with fire deficit or surplus. We developed our model of area burned as a…
Publication Type: Journal Article