Research Database
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15
Fire Science Core Curriculum
Year: 2017
This curriculum is designed to teach the basics of fire to non-fire-professional community members, including instructors and landowners, such as ranchers and farmers. The goal is to reduce risk and fire hazard through education and understanding.
Publication Type: Report
Spatially explicit measurements of forest structure and fire behavior following restoration treatments in dry forests
Year: 2017
Restoration treatments in dry forests of the western US often attempt silvicultural practices to restore the historical characteristics of forest structure and fire behavior. However, it is suggested that a reliance on non-spatial metrics of forest stand structure, along with the use of wildland fire behavior models that lack the ability to handle complex structures, may lead to uncharacteristically homogeneous rather than heterogeneous forest structures following restoration. In our study, we used spatially explicit forest inventory data and a physics based fire behavior model to investigate…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Sustainability and wildland fire: The origins of Forest Service Wildland Fire Research
Year: 2017
On June 1, 2015, the Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Branch of Research. Established in 1915 to centralize and elevate the pursuit of research throughout the agency, the Branch of Research focused on everything from silvicultural investigations conducted by the experiment stations to industrial studies and wood product improvement at the Madison, WI, Forest Products Laboratory. From its beginning, the branch oversaw ongoing research designed to develop insights, methods, and technologies to help foresters and land…
Publication Type: Report
Towards improving wildland firefighter situational awareness through daily fire behaviour risk assessments in the US Northern Rockies and Northern Great Basin
Year: 2017
Wildland firefighters must assess potential fire behaviour in order to develop appropriate strategies and tactics that will safely meet objectives. Fire danger indices integrate surface weather conditions to quantify potential variations in fire spread rates and intensities and therefore should closely relate to observed fire behaviour. These indices could better inform fire management decisions if they were linked directly to observed fire behaviour. Here, we present a simple framework for relating fire danger indices to observed categorical wildland fire behaviour. Ordinal logistic…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Models for predicting fuel consumption in sage-brush-dominated ecosystems
Year: 2013
Fuel consumption predictions are necessary to accurately estimate or model fire effects, including pollutant emissions during wildland fires. Fuel and environmental measurements on a series of operational prescribed fires were used to develop empirical models for predicting fuel consumption in big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) ecosystems. Models are proposed for predicting fuel consumption during prescribed fires in the fall and the spring. Total prefire fuel loading ranged from 5.3–23.6 Mg · ha−1; between 32% and 92% of the total loading was composed of live and dead big sagebrush.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Modelling conditional burn probability patterns for large wildland fires
Year: 2013
We present a technique for modelling conditional burn probability patterns in two dimensions for large wildland fires. The intended use for the model is strategic program planning when information about future fire weather and event durations is unavailable and estimates of the average probabilistic shape and extent of large fires on a landscape are needed. To model average conditional burn probability patterns, we organised historical fire data from Yellowstone National Park, USA, into a set of grids; one grid per fire. We captured various spatial relationships inherent in the gridded data…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Capturing Fire: RxCadre Takes Fire Measurements to a Whole New Level
Year: 2013
Models of fire behavior and effects do not always make accurate predictions, and there is not enough systematically gathered data to validate them. To help advance fire behavior and fire effects model development, the Joint Fire Science Program is helping fund the RxCADRE, which is made up of scientists from the U.S. Forest Service and several universities who orchestrate and collect data on prescribed burns in the southeastern United States. The RxCADRE-prescribed burns are yielding a comprehensive dataset of fire behavior, fire effects, and smoke chemistry and dynamics, with measurements…
Publication Type: Report
Current status and future needs of the BehavePlus fire modeling system
Year: 2013
The BehavePlus Fire Modeling System is among the most widely used systems for wildland fire prediction. It is designed for use in a range of tasks including wildfire behaviour prediction, prescribed fire planning, fire investigation, fuel hazard assessment, fire model understanding, communication and research. BehavePlus is based on mathematical models for fire behaviour, fire effects and fire environment. It is a point system for which conditions are constant for each calculation, but is designed to encourage examination of the effect of a range of conditions through tables and graphs.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Research and development supporting risk-based wildfire effects prediction for fuels and fire management: status and needs
Year: 2013
Wildland fire management has moved beyond a singular focus on suppression, calling for wildfire management for ecological benefit where no critical human assets are at risk. Processes causing direct effects and indirect, long-term ecosystem changes are complex and multidimensional. Robust risk-assessment tools are required that account for highly variable effects on multiple values-at-risk and balance competing objectives, to support decision making. Providing wildland fire managers with risk-analysis tools requires a broad scientific foundation in fire behaviour and effects prediction as…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Interactions of insects, fire and climate on fuel loads and fire behavior in mixed conifer forest
Year: 2013
Mixed-conifer forests in the interior Pacific Northwest are subject to sporadic outbreaks of the western spruce budworm, the most destructive defoliator in western North America. Such outbreaks usually occur synchronously over broad regions and lead to widespread decreases in growth rates and low to moderate levels of mortality. In the last century, changing land use and fire suppression have led to an increase in the amount and density of host tree species, and changed fire regimes. This has altered the severity and frequency of both fire and western spruce budworm. In spite of the…
Publication Type: Report
Optimising fuel treatments over time and space
Year: 2013
Fuel treatments have been widely used as a tool to reduce catastrophic wildland fire risks in many forests around the world. However, it is a challenging task for forest managers to prioritise where, when and how to implement fuel treatments across a large forest landscape. In this study, an optimisation model was developed for long-term fuel management decisions at a landscape scale. Using a simulated annealing algorithm, the model optimises locations and timing of fuel treatments, while considering changes in forest dynamics over time, fire behaviour and spread, values at risk, and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Is burn severity related to fire intensity? Observations from landscape scale remote sensing
Year: 2013
Biomass burning by wildland fires has significant ecological, social and economic impacts. Satellite remote sensing provides direct measurements of radiative energy released by the fire (i.e. fire intensity) and surrogate measures of ecological change due to the fire (i.e. fire or burn severity). Despite anecdotal observations causally linking fire intensity with severity, the nature of any relationship has not been examined over extended spatial scales. We compare fire intensities defined by Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Fire Radiative Power (MODIS FRP) products with Landsat-…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Crown fire behavior characteristics and prediction in conifer forests: a state-of-knowledge synthesis
Year: 2013
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. The key findings presented are organized along nine topical areas: types of crown fires; crown fire initiation; crown fire propagation; crown fire rate of spread; crown fire intensity and flame zone characteristics; crown fire area…
Publication Type: Report
Effects of salvage logging and pile-and-burn on fuel loading, potential fire behavior, fuel consumption and emissions
Year: 2013
We used a combination of field measurements and simulation modelling to quantify the effects of salvage logging, and a combination of salvage logging and pile-and-burn fuel surface fuel treatment (treatment combination), on fuel loadings, fire behaviour, fuel consumption and pollutant emissions at three points in time: post-windstorm (before salvage logging), post-salvage logging and post-surface fuel treatment (pile-and-burn). Salvage logging and the treatment combination significantly reduced fuel loadings, fuelbed depth and smoke emissions. Salvage logging and the treatment combination…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A Land Manager's Guide for Creating Fire-resistant Forests
Year: 2013
This publication provides an overview of how various silvicultural treatments affect fuel and fire behavior, and how to create fire-resistant forests. In properly treated, fire-resistant forests, fire intensity is reduced and overstory trees are more likely to survive than in untreated forests. Fire-resistant forests are not “fireproof” – under the right conditions, any forest will burn. Much of what we present here is pertinent to the drier forests of the Pacific Northwest, which have become extremely dense and fire prone.
Publication Type: Report