Research Database
Displaying 61 - 80 of 124
Tamm Review: Shifting global fire regimes: Lessons from reburns and research needs
Year: 2017
Across the globe, rising temperatures and altered precipitation patterns have caused persistent regional droughts, lengthened fire seasons, and increased the number of weather-driven extreme fire events. Because wildfires currently impact an increasing proportion of the total area burned, land managers need to better understand reburns – in which previously burned areas can modify the patterns and severity of subsequent fires. For example, knowing how long past fire boundaries can function as barriers to fire spread may empower decision-makers to manage some wildfires as large-scale fuel…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Policy Scenarios for fire-adapted communities: Understanding stakeholder risk-perceptions, using Fuzzy Cognitive Maps
Year: 2017
Collaborative groups are most effective when the varied stakeholder groups within them understand the risks of wildfire and take proactive steps to manage these risks. Implementing policies for fire risk mitigation and adaptation, however, remains difficult because risks and policy alternatives are not understood or supported uniformly across diverse stakeholders. To facilitate greater understanding and collaboration across diverse groups, we developed a novel approach, based on Fuzzy Cognitive Maps (FCM), in which we systematically collected mental model representations from a range of…
Publication Type: Report
Fire Science Exchange Network
Year: 2017
The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) Fire Science Exchange Network is a national collaboration of 15 regional fire science exchanges that provides the most relevant, current wildland fire science information to federal, state, local, tribal, and private stakeholders within ecologically similar regions. The network brings fire managers, practitioners, and scientists together to address regional fire management needs and challenges.
Publication Type: Report
Joint Fire Science Program Smoke Science Plan Conclusion: Smoke Science Accomplishments Under the Plan
Year: 2017
The Smoke Science Plan (SSP) was the guidance and organizational tool of the Joint Fire Science Program for smoke research from 2011 until 2016. It helped to guide the funding and management of 41 research and development projects under four thematic areas. Since its inception in 2011, 29 smoke science projects have been funded. An additional 12 legacy projects, addressing research needs identified in the SSP, were added to the portfolio for a total of 41 projects considered as part of the SSP.
Publication Type: Report
Polishing the Prism: Improving Wildfire Mitigation Planning by Coupling Landscape and Social Dimensions
Year: 2016
Effectively addressing wildfire risk to communities on large multi-owner landscapes requires an understanding of the biophysical factors that influence risk, such as fuel loads, topography, and weather, and social factors such as the capacity and willingness for communities to engage in fire-mitigation activities. Biophysical and social processes often are disconnected in wildfire mitigation planning frameworks because of mismatches in scale. The different spatial and temporal scales of these processes usually are not recognized in the planning process. Forest Service scientists Alan Ager,…
Publication Type: Report
Scanning the Future of Wildfire: Resilience Ahead...Whether We Like It or Not?
Year: 2016
The field of so-called “futures research” provides researchers and stakeholders in a given subject area or system a way to map out and plan for alternate possible scenarios of the future. A recent research project supported by the Joint Fire Science Program brought together futures researchers and wildfire specialists to envision what the future holds for wildfire impacts and how the wildfire community may respond to the complex suite of emerging challenges. The consensus of the project’s foresight panel suggests that an era of resilience is ahead: but that this resilience may come either…
Publication Type: Report
Average Stand Age from Forest Inventory Plots Does Not Describe Historical Fire Regimes in Ponderosa Pine and Mixed-Conifer Forests of Western North America
Year: 2016
Quantifying historical fire regimes provides important information for managing contemporary forests. Historical fire frequency and severity can be estimated using several methods; each method has strengths and weaknesses and presents challenges for interpretation and verification. Recent efforts to quantify the timing of historical high-severity fire events in forests of western North America have assumed that the “stand age” variable from the US Forest Service Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program reflects the timing of historical high-severity (i.e. stand-replacing) fire in ponderosa…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Does increased forest protection correspond to higher fire severity in frequent-fire forests of the western United States?
Year: 2016
There is a widespread view among land managers and others that the protected status of many forestlands in the western United States corresponds with higher fire severity levels due to historical restrictions on logging that contribute to greater amounts of biomass and fuel loading in less intensively managed areas, particularly after decades of fire suppression. This view has led to recent proposals—both administrative and legislative—to reduce or eliminate forest protections and increase some forms of logging based on the belief that restrictions on active management have increased fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Drivers of Wildfire Suppression Costs: A Review
Year: 2016
As federal spending on wildland fire suppression has increased dramatically in recent decades, significant policymaking has been designed, at least in part, to address and temper rising costs. Effective strategies for controlling public spending and leveraging limited wildfire management resources depend on a comprehensive understanding of the drivers of suppression costs. Problematically, frequently noted drivers often do not explain variability between similar wildfires or comparable wildfire seasons. As speculation and scrutiny around rising costs have increased, so too have scholarly…
Publication Type: Report
Areas of Agreement and Disagreement Regarding Ponderosa Pine and Mixed Conifer Forest Fire Regimes: A Dialogue with Stevens et al.
Year: 2016
In a recent PLOS ONE paper, we conducted an evidence-based analysis of current versus historical fire regimes and concluded that traditionally defined reference conditions of low-severity fire regimes for ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and mixed-conifer forests were incomplete, missing considerable variability in forest structure and fire regimes. Stevens et al. (this issue) agree that high-severity fire was a component of these forests, but disagree that one of the several sources of evidence, stand age from a large number of forest inventory and analysis (FIA) plots across the western USA…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Socioecological transitions trigger fire regime shifts and modulate fire–climate interactions in the Sierra Nevada, USA, 1600–2015 CE
Year: 2016
Large wildfires in California cause significant socioecological impacts, and half of the federal funds for fire suppression are spent each year in California. Future fire activity is projected to increase with climatechange, but predictions are uncertain because humans can modulate or even override climatic effects on fire activity. Here we test the hypothesis that changes in socioecological systems from the NativeAmerican to the current period drove shifts in fire activity and modulated fire–climate relationships in the Sierra Nevada. We developed a 415-y record (1600–2015 CE) of fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Secretarial Order 3336 Science Priorities: The Role of Science Past, Present, and Future
Year: 2016
Within sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems, which are home to more than 350 species of plants and animals, potentially more frequent and severe fires are causing an increased threat to human safety, property, rural economies, and wildlife habitat. In particular, the habitat of the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), an iconic sagebrush-dependent species, is at risk. In response to this reality, on January 15, 2015, Secretary Sally Jewell signed Secretarial Order 3336 (S.O. 3336), titled “Rangeland Fire Prevention, Management, and Restoration.” The main purpose of the order is…
Publication Type: Report
Toward a more ecologically informed view of severe forest fires
Year: 2016
We use the historical presence of high-severity fire patches in mixed-conifer forests of the western United States to make several points that we hope will encourage development of a more ecologically informed view of severe wildland fire effects. First, many plant and animal species use, and have sometimes evolved to depend on, severely burned forest conditions for their persistence. Second, evidence from fire history studies also suggests that a complex mosaic of severely burned conifer patches was common historically in the West. Third, to maintain ecological integrity in forests born of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The climate space of fire regimes in north-western North America
Year: 2015
Aim Studies of fire activity along environmental gradients have been undertaken, but the results of such studies have yet to be integrated with fire-regime analysis. We characterize fire-regime components along climate gradients and a gradient of human influence. Location We focus on a climatically diverse region of north-western North America extending from northern British Columbia, Canada, to northern Utah and Colorado, USA. Methods We used a multivariate framework to collapse 12 climatic variables into two major climate gradients and binned them into 73 discrete climate domains. We…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A new approach to evaluate forest structure restoration needs across Oregon and Washington
Year: 2015
Widespread habitat degradation and uncharacteristic fire, insect, and disease outbreaks in forests across the western United States have led to highly publicized calls to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration. Despite these calls, we frequently lack a comprehensive understanding of forest restoration needs. In this study we demonstrate a new approach for evaluating where, how much, and what types of restoration are needed to move present day landscape scale forest structure towards a Natural Range of Variability (NRV) across eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, and southwestern…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire, Fuels, and Streams: The Effects and Effectiveness of Riparian Treatments
Year: 2015
Fire is an important disturbance in riparian systems—consuming vegetation; increasing light;creating snags and debris flows; altering habitat structure; and affecting stream conditions, erosion, andhydrology. For many years, land managers have worked to keep fire out of riparian systems through theuse of buffers. A number of projects funded by the Joint Fire Science Program are shedding light onthe dynamics of fire in riparian systems. Recent research and field practice have shown that (1) ripariantreatments can be beneficial and are not as risky as previously thought; and (2) riparian…
Publication Type: Report
Interval squeeze: altered fire regimes and demographic responses interact to threaten woody species persistence as climate changes
Year: 2015
Projected effects of climate change across many ecosystems globally include more frequent disturbance byfire and reduced plant growth due to warmer (and especially drier) conditions. Such changes affect species– particularly fire-intolerant woody plants – by simultaneously reducing recruitment, growth, and survival.Collectively, these mechanisms may narrow the fire interval window compatible with populationpersistence, driving species to extirpation or extinction. We present a conceptual model of these combinedeffects, based on synthesis of the known impacts of climate change and altered fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Recent burning of boreal forests exceeds fire regime limits of the past 10,000 years
Year: 2015
Wildfire activity in boreal forests is anticipated to increase dramatically, with far-reaching ecological and socioeconomic consequences. Paleorecords are indispensible for elucidating boreal fire regime dynamics under changing climate, because fire return intervals and successional cycles in these ecosystems occur over decadal to centennial timescales. We present charcoal records from 14 lakes in the Yukon Flats of interior Alaska, one of the most flammable ecoregions of the boreal forest biome, to infer causes and consequences of fire regime change over the past 10,000 y. Strong…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Modeling wildfire regimes in forest landscapes: abstracting a complex reality
Year: 2015
Fire is a natural disturbance that is nearly ubiquitous in terrestrial ecosystems. The capacity to burn exists virtually wherever vegetation grows. In some forested landscapes, fire is a principal driver of rapid ecosystem change, resetting succession ( McKenzie et al. 1996a ) and changing wildlife habitat (Cushman et al. 2011 ), hydrology ( Feikema et al. 2013 ), element cycles ( Smithwick 2011 ), and even landforms (Pierce et al. 2004 ). In boreal forests, for example, recurring wildfi res are the main cause of compositional and spatial patterns ( Wein and MacLean 1983 ), where a fi re-…
Publication Type: Book Chapter
Traditional Ecological Knowledge: A Model for Modern Fire Management?
Year: 2014
For many thousands of years, aboriginal peoples worldwide used fire to manage landscapes. In NorthAmerica, the frequency and extent of fire (both human caused and natural) were much reduced afterEuropean colonization. Fire exclusion became the policy in the United States for most of the 20thcentury as the country became more settled and industrialized. Past fire exclusion has helped producelandscapes that are highly susceptible to uncharacteristically severe wildfire. An urgent challengefor land managers today is to reduce fire risk through several means, including prescribed burning,without…
Publication Type: Report