Research Database
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9
California Spotted Owl, Songbird, and Small Mammal Responses to Landscape Fuel Treatments
Year: 2014
A principal challenge of federal forest management has been maintaining and improving habitat for sensitive species in forests adapted to frequent, low- to moderate-intensity fire regimes that have become increasingly vulnerable to uncharacteristically severe wildfires. To enhance forest resilience, a coordinated landscape fuel network was installed in the northern Sierra Nevada, which reduced the potential for hazardous fire, despite constraints for wildlife protection that limited the extent and intensity of treatments. Small mammal and songbird communities were largely unaffected by this…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mapping the daily progression of large wildland fires using MODIS active fire data
Year: 2014
High temporal resolution information on burnt area is needed to improve fire behaviour and emissions models. We used the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) thermal anomaly and active fire product (MO(Y)D14) as input to a kriging interpolation to derive continuous maps of the timing of burnt area for 16 large wildland fires. For each fire, parameters for the kriging model were defined using variogram analysis. The optimal number of observations used to estimate a pixel’s time of burning varied between four and six among the fires studied. The median standard error from…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mapping day-of-burning with coarse-resolution satellite fire-detection data
Year: 2014
Evaluating the influence of observed daily weather on observed fire-related effects (e.g. smoke production, carbon emissions and burn severity) often involves knowing exactly what day any given area has burned. As such, several studies have used fire progression maps – in which the perimeter of an actively burning fire is mapped at a fairly high temporal resolution – or MODIS satellite data to determine the day-of-burning, thereby allowing an evaluation of the influence of daily weather. However, fire progression maps have many caveats, the most substantial being that they are rarely mapped…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Assessing the quality of forest fuel loading data collected using public participation methods and smartphones
Year: 2014
Effective wildfire management in the wildland–urban interface (WUI) depends on timely data on forest fuel loading to inform management decisions. Mobile personal communication devices, such as smartphones, present new opportunities to collect data in the WUI, using sensors within the device – such as the camera, global positioning system (GPS), accelerometer, compass, data storage and networked data transfer. In addition to providing a tool for forest professionals, smartphones can also facilitate engaging other members of the community in forest management as they are now available to a…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Modeling Regional-Scale Wildland Fire Emissions with the Wildland Fire Emissions Information System
Year: 2014
As carbon modeling tools become more comprehensive, spatial data are needed to improve quantitative maps of carbon emissions from fire.The Wildland Fire Emissions Information System (WFEIS) provides mapped estimates of carbon emissions from historical forest fires in the United States through a web browser. WFEIS improves access to data and provides a consistent approach to estimating emissions at landscape, regional, and continental scales. The system taps into data and tools developed by the U.S. Forest Serviceto describe fuels, fuel loadings, and fuel consumption and merges information…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Landsat time series and lidar as predictors of live and dead basal area across five bark beetle-affected forests
Year: 2014
Bark beetle-caused tree mortality affects important forest ecosystem processes. Remote sensing methodologies that quantify live and dead basal area (BA) in bark beetle-affected forests can provide valuable information to forest managers and researchers. We compared the utility of light detection and ranging (lidar) and the Landsat-based detection of trends in disturbance and recovery (LandTrendr) algorithm to predict total, live, dead, and percent dead BA in five bark beetle-affected forests in Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, and Oregon, USA. The BA response variables were predicted from…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Climate change vulnerability and adaptation in the North Cascades region, Washington
Year: 2014
The North Cascadia Adaptation Partnership (NCAP) is a science-management partnership consisting of the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service Mount Baker-Snoqualmie and Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forests and Pacific Northwest Research Station; North Cascades National Park Complex; Mount Rainier National Park; and University of Washington Climate Impacts Group. These organizations worked with numerous stakeholders over 2 years to identify climate change issues relevant to resource management in the North Cascades and to find solutions that will facilitate the transition of the diverse…
Publication Type: Report
Assessing the Compatibility of Fuel Treatments, Wildfire Risk, and Conservation of Northern Spotted Owl Habitats and Populations in the Eastern Cascades: A Multi-Scale Analysis
Year: 2014
National Forests in the dry forest provinces on the east‐side of the Oregon and Washington Cascades have been managed under the guidelines of local Forest Plans and the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), both of which specify large areas of late‐successional reserves (LSRs). In contrast, the recently‐released USDI Fish and Wildlife Service Revised Recovery Plan (RRP) for the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) calls for development of dynamic and shifting mosaics in the dry forests, and retention of LSRs in moist forests of eastern Cascades of Oregon and Washington, to address NSO habitat and wildfire…
Publication Type: Report
Challenges of assessing fire and burn severity using field measures, remote sensing and modelling
Year: 2014
Comprehensive assessment of ecological change after fires have burned forests and rangelands is important if we are to understand, predict and measure fire effects. We highlight the challenges in effective assessment of fire and burn severity in the field and using both remote sensing and simulation models. We draw on diverse recent research for guidance on assessing fire effects on vegetation and soil using field methods, remote sensing and models. We suggest that instead of collapsing many diverse, complex and interacting fire effects into a single severity index, the effects of fire should…
Publication Type: Journal Article