Research Database
Displaying 41 - 58 of 58
Contemporary forest restoration: A review emphasizing function
Year: 2014
The forest restoration challenge (globally 2 billion ha) and the prospect of changing climate with increasing frequency of extreme events argues for approaching restoration from a functional and landscape perspective. Because the practice of restoration utilizes many techniques common to silviculture, no clear line separates ordinary forestry practices from restoration. The distinction may be that extra-ordinary activities are required in the face of degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems. Restoration is driven by the desire to increase sustainability of ecosystems and their services and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Examining fire-prone forest landscapes as coupled human and natural systems
Year: 2014
Fire-prone landscapes are not well studied as coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) and present many challenges for understanding and promoting adaptive behaviors and institutions. Here, we explore how heterogeneity, feedbacks, and external drivers in this type of natural hazard system can lead to complexity and can limit the development of more adaptive approaches to policy and management. Institutions and social networks can counter these limitations and promote adaptation. We also develop a conceptual model that includes a robust characterization of social subsystems for a fire-prone…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland firefighter safety zones: a review of past science and summary of future needs
Year: 2014
Current wildland firefighter safety zone guidelines are based on studies that assume flat terrain, radiant heating, finite flame width, constant flame temperature and high flame emissivity. Firefighter entrapments and injuries occur across a broad range of vegetation, terrain and atmospheric conditions generally when they are within two flame heights of the fire. Injury is not confined to radiant heating or flat terrain; consequently, convective heating should be considered as a potential heating mode. Current understanding of energy transport in wildland fires is briefly summarised, followed…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Western Spruce Budworm Outbreaks Did Not Increase Fire Risk Over the Last Three Centuries: A Dendrochronological Analysis of Inter-Disturbance Synergism
Year: 2014
Insect outbreaks are often assumed to increase the severity or probability of fire occurrence through increased fuel availability, while fires may in turn alter susceptibility of forests to subsequent insect outbreaks through changes in the spatial distribution of suitable host trees. However, little is actually known about the potential synergisms between these natural disturbances. Assessing inter-disturbance synergism is challenging due to the short length of historical records and the confounding influences of land use and climate changes on natural disturbance dynamics. We used…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Eastern Washington Forest Health: Hazards, Accomplishments and Restoration Strategy
Year: 2014
Much of the 10 million acres of forestland in eastern Washington faces serious threats to forest health. Decades of fire suppression and past management practices that changed the species and structure of these forests have put them at higher risk of damage by disease, insects and wildfire.
Publication Type: Report
An Evaluation of Fire Regime Reconstruction Methods
Year: 2014
Ecological restoration is a practice that seeks to heal degraded ecosystems by reestablishing native species, structural characteristics, and ecological processes. The Society for Ecological Restoration International defines ecological restoration as “an intentional activity that initiates or accelerates the recovery of an ecosystem with respect to its health, integrity and sustainability….Restoration attempts to return an ecosystem to its historic trajectory” (Society for Ecological Restoration International Science and Policy Working Group 2004). Most frequent-fire forests throughout the…
Publication Type: Report
Swiss Needle Cast
Year: 2013
Since the 1990s, there has been an epidemic of SNC affecting hundreds of thousands of acres of coastal Douglas-fir forests in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. This constitutes one of the largest foliage-disease epidemics of conifers in North America. SNC is also a localized problem in many inland areas of the west, especially in Montana, Idaho, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon.
Publication Type: Report
Projected Future Changes in Vegetation in Western North America in the Twenty-First Century
Year: 2013
Rapid and broad-scale forest mortality associated with recent droughts, rising temperature, and insect outbreaks has been observed over western North America (NA). Climate models project additional future warming and increasing drought and water stress for this region. To assess future potential changes in vegetation distributions in western NA, the Community Earth System Model (CESM) coupled with its Dynamic Global Vegetation Model (DGVM) was used under the future A2 emissions scenario. To better span uncertainties in future climate, eight sea surface temperature (SST) projections provided…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mapping multiple forest threats in the northwestern United States
Year: 2013
US forestlands are increasingly subject to disturbances including wildfire, insects and disease, and urban and exurban development. Devising strategies for addressing these “forest threats“ depends on anticipating where individual disturbances are most likely and where they might occur in combination. However, many spatial data sets describing forest threats are produced at fine scales but are intended only for coarse-scale planning and policy purposes. We demonstrate one way to combine and display forest threat data at their appropriate spatial scales, using spatial data characterizing…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Living in a tinderbox: wildfire risk perceptions and mitigating behaviors
Year: 2013
The loss of homes to wildfires is an important issue in the USA and other countries. Yet many homeowners living in fire-prone areas do not undertake mitigating actions, such as clearing vegetation, to decrease the risk of losing their home. To better understand the complexity of wildfire risk-mitigation decisions and the role of perceived risk, we conducted a survey of homeowners in a fire-prone area of the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. We examine the relationship between perceived wildfire risk ratings and risk-mitigating behaviours in two ways. First, we model wildfire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
ArcFuels10 System Overview
Year: 2013
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. Fuel management often is a particularly complicated process in which the benefits and potential impacts of fuel treatments need to be demonstrated in the context of land management goals and public expectations. The fuel treatment planning process is complicated by the lack of data assimilation among fire behavior models and weak linkages to geographic information…
Publication Type: Report
Comparative Hazard Assessment for Protected Species in a Fire-Prone Landscape
Year: 2012
We conducted a comparative hazard assessment for 325,000 ha in a fire-prone area of southwest Oregon, USA. The landscape contains a variety of land ownerships, fire regimes, and management strategies. Our comparative hazard assessment evaluated the effects of two management strategies on crown fire potential and northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) conservation: (1) no action, and (2) active manipulation of hazardous fuels. Model simulations indicated that active management of sites with high fire hazard was more favorable to spotted owl conservation over the long term (75 years…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Assessing tree health
Year: 2011
Healthy trees are beneficial to our environment and our property values - but how do we determine if a tree is healthy? This publication briefly discusses common tree health problems and outlines a procedure for assessing tree conditions and getting diagnoses and recommendations from tree health professionals.
Publication Type: Report
Nontribal community recovery from wildfire five years later: The case of the Rodeo-Chediski fire
Year: 2011
Recent literature suggests that natural disasters such as wildfires often have the short-term effect of ‘‘bringing people together’’ while also under some circumstances generating social conflict at the local level. Conflict has been documented particularly when social relations are disembedded by nonlocal entities and there is a perceived loss of local agency. There is less agreement about longer term impacts. We present results of a re-study of a set of communities affected by the largest wildfire in Arizona history. The re-study uses structuration theory to suggest that while local…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Reducing Fire Risk on Your Forest Property
Year: 2010
Whether you own a few acres or thousands, this publication will help you reduce the potential for wildfire damage on your property while improving overall forest health and wildlife habitat. Although these actions won’t prevent a wildfire from coming onto your property, they can make it more fire resistant. In other words, by following the guidelines in this publication you can reduce a fire’s severity so that most trees survive and firefighters are better able to attack and extinguish the blaze. While this publication provides suggestions for making your property more fire-resistant, it does…
Publication Type: Report
A Tale of Two Cedars: International Symposium on Western Redcedar and Yellow-Cedar
Year: 2010
From May 24-28, 2010, an international symposium on western redcedar (Thuja plicata) and yellow-cedar (Callitropsis nootkatensis [syn. Chamaecyparis nootkatensis]) was held at the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. The symposium was entitled “A Tale of Two Cedars” and brought together local, regional, national, and international experts to present cultural, biological, management and economic information on the two species. Although some papers or posters focused on just one of the cedars, many of the presenters covered both species and discussed the…
Publication Type: Report
Wildfire Risk Management on a Landscape with Public and Private Ownership: Who Pays for Protection?
Year: 2010
Wildfire, like many natural hazards, affects large landscapes with many landowners and the risk individual owners face depends on both individual and collective protective actions. In this study, we develop a spatially explicit game theoretic model to examine the strategic interaction between landowners’ hazard mitigation decisions on a landscape with public and private ownership. We find that in areas where ownership is mixed, the private landowner performs too little fuel treatment as they ‘‘free ride’’—capture benefits without incurring the costs—on public protection, while areas with…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Forest structure and fire hazard in dry forests of the Western United States
Year: 2005
Fire, in conjunction with landforms and climate, shapes the structure and function of forests throughout the Western United States, where millions of acres of forest lands contain accumulations of flammable fuel that are much higher than historical conditions owing to various forms of fire exclusion. The Healthy Forests Restoration Act mandates that public land managers assertively address this situation through active management of fuel and vegetation. This document synthesizes the relevant scientific knowledge that can assist fuel-treatment projects on national forests and other public…
Publication Type: Report