Research Database
Displaying 101 - 120 of 133
Fire behavior in masticated fuels: A review
Year: 2014
Mastication is an increasingly common fuels treatment that redistributes “ladder” fuels to the forest floor to reduce vertical fuel continuity, crown fire potential, and fireline intensity, but fuel models do not exist for predicting fire behavior in these fuel types. Recent fires burning in masticated fuels have behaved in unexpected and contradictory ways, likely because the shredded, compact fuel created when trees and shrubs are masticated contains irregularly shaped pieces in mixtures quite different from other woody fuels. We review fuels characteristics and fire behavior in masticated…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland Urban Interface Wildfire Mitigation Desk Reference Guide
Year: 2014
The effects of wildland fire on communities have become more intense, frequent, and far-reaching. Increased development in the wildland urban interface means higher wildfire risk and more suppression needs, costing billions every year. A comprehensive approach to preparedness and mitigation is an effective way to address increasing suppression costs and reduce risk to communities. The Wildland Urban Interface Wildfire Mitigation Desk Reference Guide is designed to provide basic background information on relevant programs and terminology for those, whether community members or agency personnel…
Publication Type: Government Report
Vegetation Recovery and Fuel Reduction after Seasonal Burning of Western Juniper
Year: 2014
The decrease in fire activity has been recognized as a main cause of expansion of North American woodlands. Piñon-juniper habitat in the western United States has expanded in area nearly 10-fold since the late 1800s. Woodland control measures using chainsaws, heavy equipment, and prescribed fire are used to restore sagebrush steppe plant communities. We compared vegetation recovery following cutting and prescribed fire on three sites in late Phase 2 (mid succession) and Phase 3 (late succession) western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis Hook.) woodlands in southeast Oregon. Treatments were…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire evacuation and its alternatives: perspectives from four United States' communities
Year: 2014
Recent years have seen growing interest within the United States fire management community in exploring alternatives to the standard approach of evacuating entire populations that are threatened by a wildfire. There has been particular interest in what can be learned from the Australian approach, whereby residents choose whether or not to evacuate under the ‘prepare, stay and defend or leave early’ approach, also called Stay or Go. Given these developments, it is useful to understand what elements are taken into consideration by those who would be most affected by a new approach when they…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Hydrologic and erosion responses to wildfire along the rangeland-xeric forest continuum in the western US: a review and model of hydrologic vulnerability
Year: 2014
The recent increase in wildfire activity across the rangeland–xeric forest continuum in the western United States has landscape-scale consequences in terms of runoff and erosion. Concomitant cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.) invasions, plant community transitions and a warming climate in recent decades along grassland–shrubland–woodland–xeric forest transitions have promoted frequent and large wildfires, and continuance of the trend appears likely if warming climate conditions prevail. These changes potentially increase overall hydrologic vulnerability by spatially and temporally increasing…
Publication Type: Journal Article
How risk management can prevent future wildfire disasters in the wildland-urban interface
Year: 2014
Recent fire seasons in the western United States are some of the most damaging and costly on record. Wildfires in the wildland-urban interface on the Colorado Front Range, resulting in thousands of homes burned and civilian fatalities, although devastating, are not without historical reference. These fires are consistent with the characteristics of large, damaging, interface fires that threaten communities across much of the western United States. Wildfires are inevitable, but the destruction of homes, ecosystems, and lives is not. We propose the principles of risk analysis to provide land…
Publication Type: Report
Wildland firefighter entrapment avoidance: modelling evacuation triggers
Year: 2013
Wildland firefighters are often called on to make tactical decisions under stressful conditions in order to suppress a fire. These decisions can be hindered by human factors such as insufficient knowledge of surroundings and conditions, lack of experience, overextension of resources or loss of situational awareness. One potential tool for assisting fire managers in situations where human factors can hinder decision-making is the Wildland–Urban Interface Evacuation (WUIVAC) model, which models fire minimum travel times to create geographic trigger buffers for evacuation recommendations.…
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
Using native annual plants to restore post-fire habitats in western North America
Year: 2013
Increasing fire frequencies and uncharacteristic severe fires have created a need for improved restoration methods across rangelands in western North America. Traditional restoration seed mixtures of native perennial mid- to late-seral plant species may not be suitable for intensely burned sites that have been returned to an early-seral condition. Under such conditions, native annual plant species are likely to be more successful at becoming established and competing with exotic annual plant species, such as Bromus tectorum L., for resources. We used a field study in Colorado and Idaho, USA,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Changes in development near public forest lands in Oregon and Washington, 1974-2005: Implications for management
Year: 2013
Development owing to population increases over the last 30 years has greatly affected forested lands in the United States. To assess and compare increases in development, we counted changes in the number of structures on a systematic grid of photointerpreted points around public forest land in Washington and Oregon. Areas bordering public forest land are showing substantial increases in development, with the number of structures on private lands near almost all types of public forest more than doubling between the 1970s and 2000s. Lands bordering Washington’s Department of Natural Resources…
Publication Type: Report
Does seeding after wildfires in rangelands reduce erosion or invasive species?
Year: 2013
Mitigation of ecological damage caused by rangeland wildfires has historically been an issue restricted to the western United States. It has focused on conservation of ecosystem function through reducing soil erosion and spread of invasive plants. Effectiveness of mitigation treatments has been debated recently. We reviewed recent literature to conduct a meta-analysis of seeding after wildfires to determine if seedings may (1) protect ecosystems against soil erosion and (2) reduce invasion or abundance of undesirable nonnative plant species. Effectiveness of postfire seedings was examined in…
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
On the use of a firebrand generator to investigate the ignition of structures in WUI fires
Year: 2013
An experimental apparatus has been constructed to generate a controlled and repeatable size and mass distribution of glowing firebrands. The present study reports on a series of experiments conducted in order to characterize the performance of this firebrand generator. Firebrand generator characterization and subsequent structural ignition experiments were performed at the Fire Research Wind Tunnel Facility (FRWTF) at the Building Research Institute (BRI) in Tsukuba, Japan. The firebrand generator was fed with mulch generated from Korean Pine trees. To produce repeatable initial conditions…
Publication Type: Report
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
Influence of climate and environment on post-fire recovery of mountain sagbrush
Year: 2013
In arid and semi-arid landscapes around the world, wildfire plays a key role in maintaining species diversity. Dominant plant associations may depend upon particular fire regime characteristics for their persistence. Mountain shrub communities in high-elevation landscapes of the Intermountain West, USA, are strongly influenced by the post-fire recovery dynamics of the obligate-seeding shrub, mountain big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt. ssp. vaseyana [Rydb.] Beetle). This species is a short-distance disperser with a short-lived seedbank, leading to highly variable post-fire recovery…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Social Science at the WUI: A Compendium of Research Results to Create Fire-Adapted Communities
Year: 2013
Over the past decade, a growing body of research has been conducted on the human dimensions of wildland fire. Building on a relatively small number of foundational studies, this research now addresses a wide range of topics including mitigation activities on private lands, fuels reduction treatments on public land, community impacts and resident behaviors during fire, acceptance of approaches to postfire restoration and recovery, and fire management policy and decision making. As this research has matured, there has been a recognition of the need to examine the full body of resulting…
Publication Type: Report
Sagebrush steppe recovery after fire varies by development phase of Juniperus occidentalis woodland
Year: 2013
Woodland ecosystems of the world have been changed by land use demands, altered fire regimes, invasive species and climate change. Reduced fire frequency is recognised as a main causative agent for Pinus–Juniperus L. (piñon–juniper) expansion in North American woodlands. Piñon–juniper control measures, including prescribed fire, are increasingly employed to restore sagebrush steppe communities. We compared vegetation recovery following prescribed fire on Phase 2 (mid-succession) and Phase 3 (late-succession) Juniperus occidentalis Hook. (western juniper) woodlands in Oregon. The herbaceous…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire, Wildlands, and People: Understanding and preparing for wildfire in the wildland-urban interface
Year: 2013
Fire has historically played a fundamental ecological role in many of America’s wildland areas. However, the rising number of homes in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), associated impacts on lives and property from wildfire, and escalating costs of wildfire management have led to an urgent need for communities to become "fire-adapted." We present maps of the conterminous United States that illustrate historical natural fire regimes, the wildland-urban interface, and the number and location of structures burned since 1999. We outline a sampler of actions, programs, and community planning and…
Publication Type: Report
Management of cheatgrass fuel loading in the shrub-steppe
Year: 2013
The fire risk experiment was in plant communities that spanned the range of B. tectorum cover. Bromus tectorum cover was grouped into five classes. Each replicate is comprised of 8 to 18 plots in the three lowest B. tectorum cover classes and 2 to 6 plots at the two highest cover classes. A replicate is a collection of plots where the risk of fire was determined as the proportion of plots that burned. Each class has four replicates. We used 176 square plots, 10 m on a side. Two hundred twenty six plots, 10 m on a side, were used to related B. tectorum cover…
Publication Type: Presentation
Lessons Learned from Waldo Canyon: FAC mitigation assessment team report
Year: 2013
The Waldo Canyon fire presented the first opportunity for partners in the national Fire Adapted Communities (FAC) Coalition to collectively assess the performance of mitigation practices in Colorado Springs in a post-fire environment and to compare the results to the mitigation strategy recommended by the Fire Adapted Communities program. The assessment was conducted from July 18-20, 2012, by a FAC Wildfire Mitigation Assessment Team, which included two sets of researchers: structural assessment and forestry experts and social science and public education experts, accompanied by staff from…
Publication Type: Report