Research Database
Displaying 21 - 40 of 57
Using culturally significant birds to guide the timing of prescribed fires in the Klamath Siskiyou Bioregion
Year: 2023
Historically, wildfire and tribal burning practices played important roles in shaping ecosystems throughout the Klamath Siskiyou Bioregion of northern California and southern Oregon. Over the past several decades, there has been increased interest in the application of fire for forest management through the implementation of prescribed fires within habitats that are used by a diversity of migrant and resident land birds. While many bird species may benefit from habitat enhancements associated with wildfires, cultural burning, and prescribed fire, individuals may face direct or indirect harm.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Indigenous Fire Futures
Year: 2023
Dominant causal explanations of the wildfire threat in California include anthropogenic climate change, fire suppression, industrial logging, and the expansion of residential settlements, which are all products of settler colonial property regimes and structures of resource extraction. Settler colonialism is grounded in Indigenous erasure and dispossession through militarism and incarceration, which are prominent tools in California's fire industrial complex. To challenge settler colonial frameworks within fire management, Indigenous peoples are organizing to expand Indigenous cultural…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mechanical thinning restores ecological functions in a seasonally dry ponderosa pine forest in the inland Pacific Northwest, USA
Year: 2023
An increasingly important goal of federal land managers in seasonally dry forests of the western US is restoring forest resilience. In this study, we quantified the degree to which a thinning treatment in a dry forest of eastern Oregon restored aspects of forest resilience by focusing on key functional attributes of our study system. First, we measured several physiological responses of overstory trees that are associated with resilience, including radial growth, resin production, abundance of non-structural carbohydrates (NSC), and leaf area. Second, we investigated understory vegetation…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Solastalgia to Soliphilia: Cultural Fire, Climate Change, and Indigenous Healing
Year: 2023
Wildly destructive fires, wind driven through unmanaged and untended lands, take lives and homes and the solace of familiar places. Ash blankets the remains, trauma takes hold, but even when the smoke clears and communities begin to heal, there is a loss beyond words. These wildfires reveal the ways many are lacking relationships with the land. Without good relationships with our environments, we worsen the health of land, plants, and animals. In this article, we foreground the experiential richness of storytelling as we build upon previous publications in Ecopsychology, further…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fuel Profiles and Biomass Carbon Following Bark Beetle Outbreaks: Insights for Disturbance Interactions from a Historical Silvicultural Experiment
Year: 2023
Anticipating consequences of disturbance interactions on ecosystem structure and function is a critical management priority as disturbance activity increases with warming climate. Across the Northern Hemisphere, extensive tree mortality from recent bark beetle outbreaks raises concerns about potential fire behavior and post-fire forest function. Silvicultural treatments (that is, partial or complete cutting of forest stands) may reduce outbreak severity and subsequent fuel loads, but longevity of pre-outbreak treatment effects on outbreak severity and post-outbreak fuel profiles remains…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Harnessing Natural Disturbances: A Nature-Based Solution for Restoring and Adapting Dry Forests in the Western USA to Climate Change
Year: 2023
Natural disturbances (wildfires, droughts, beetle outbreaks) shaped temperate forests for millennia, including dry forests of the western USA. Could they now best restore and adapt dry forests to climate change while protecting nearby communities? Mechanical fuel-reduction treatments (e.g., thinning) reduce landscape heterogeneity and appear ineffective since <1% of the treated area encounters fire each year and fires are still increasing. We propose and analyze a nature-based solution (NbS), using natural disturbances, to see whether it is feasible, how long it might take, and whether it…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Exceptional variability in historical fire regimes across a western Cascades landscape, Oregon, USA
Year: 2023
Detailed information about the historical range of variability in wildfire activity informs adaptation to future climate and disturbance regimes. Here, we describe one of the first annually resolved reconstructions of historical (1500–1900 ce) fire occurrence in coast Douglas-fir dominated forests of the west slope of the Cascade Range in western Oregon. Mean fire return intervals (MFRIs) across 16 sites within our study area ranged from 6 to 165 years. Variability in MFRIs was strongly associated with average maximum summer vapor pressure deficit. Fire occurred infrequently in Douglas-fir…
Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Fire History, Mixed-Conifer Management, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction
Publication Type: Journal Article
Prescribed fire after thinning increased resistance of sub-Mediterranean pine forests to drought events and wildfires
Year: 2023
Vegetation structure affects the vulnerability of a forest to drought events and wildfires. Management decisions, such as thinning intensity and type of understory treatment, influence competition for water resources and amount of fuel available. While heavy thinning effectively reduces tree water stress and intensity of a crown fire, the duration of these benefits may be limited by a fast growth response of the understory. Our aim was to study the effect of forest structure on pine forests vulnerability to extreme drought events and on the potential wildfire behaviour after management, with…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Economic Value of Fuel Treatments: A Review of the Recent Literature for Fuel Treatment Planning
Year: 2022
This review synthesizes the scientific literature on fuel treatment economics published since 2013 with a focus on its implications for land managers and policy makers. We review the literature on whether fuel treatments are financially viable for land management agencies at the time of implementation, as well as over the lifespan of fuel treatment effectiveness. We also review the literature that considers the broad benefits of fuel treatments across multiple sectors of society. Most studies find that fuel treatments are not financially viable for land management agencies based on revenue…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The right to burn: barriers and opportunities for Indigenous-led fire stewardship in Canada
Year: 2022
Indigenous fire stewardship enhances ecosystem diversity, assists with the management of complex resources, and reduces wildfire risk by lessening fuel loads. Although Indigenous Peoples have maintained fire stewardship practices for millennia and continue to be keepers of fire knowledge, significant barriers exist for re-engaging in cultural burning. Indigenous communities in Canada have unique vulnerabilities to large and high-intensity wildfires as they are predominately located in remote, forested regions and lack financial support at federal and provincial levels to mitigate wildfire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Traditional Fire Knowledge: A Thematic Synthesis Approach
Year: 2022
Building fire-adaptive communities and fostering fire-resilient landscapes have become two of the main research strands of wildfire science that go beyond strictly biophysical viewpoints and call for the integration of complementary visions of landscapes and the communities living there, with their legacy of knowledge and subjective dimensions. Both indigenous fire management (IFM) and local fire management (LFM) are rooted in traditional fire knowledge and are among the most important contributions that rural communities can make to management partnerships. Focusing specifically on…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Transforming fire governance in British Columbia, Canada: an emerging vision for coexisting with fire
Year: 2022
The dominant command and control fire governance paradigm is proven ineffective at coping with modern wildfire challenges. In response, jurisdictions globally are calling for transformative change that will facilitate coexisting with future fires. Enacting transformative change requires attention to historical governance attributes that may enable or constrain transformation, including diverse actors, objectives, worldviews of fire, decision-making processes and power, legislation, and drivers of change. To identify potential pathways for transformative change, we systematically examined the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Indigenous fire management and cross-scale fire-climate relationships in the Southwest United States from 1500 to 1900 CE
Year: 2022
Prior research suggests that Indigenous fire management buffers climate influences on wildfires, but it is unclear whether these benefits accrue across geographic scales. We use a network of 4824 fire-scarred trees in Southwest United States dry forests to analyze up to 400 years of fire-climate relationships at local, landscape, and regional scales for traditional territories of three different Indigenous cultures. Comparison of fire-year and prior climate conditions for periods of intensive cultural use and less-intensive use indicates that Indigenous fire management weakened fire-climate…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Cost of Forest Thinning Operations in the Western United States: A Systematic Literature Review and New Thinning Cost Model
Year: 2022
Mechanical forest thinning treatments are implemented across the western United States (US) to improve forest health and reduce hazardous fuels. However, the main challenge in thinning operations is low financial feasibility. This study synthesized the stump-to-truck cost of forest thinning operations in the western US based on operations research articles published over the last 40 years (1980–2020). We systematically selected and reviewed 20 thinning studies to analyze key variables affecting machine productivity and harvesting costs. The average cost of forest thinning was lowest for a…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The contribution of Indigenous stewardship to an historical mixed-severity fire regime in British Columbia, Canada
Year: 2022
Indigenous land stewardship and mixed-severity fire regimes both promote landscape heterogeneity, and the relationship between them is an emerging area of research. In our study, we reconstructed the historical fire regime of Ne Sextsine, a 5900-ha dry, Douglas-fir-dominated forest in the traditional territory of the T’exelc (Williams Lake First Nation) in British Columbia, Canada. Between 1550 and 1982 CE, we found median fire intervals of 18 years at the plot-level and 4 years at the study site-level. Ne Sextsine was characterized by an historical mixed-severity fire regime, dominated by…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Incorporating place-based values into ecological restoration
Year: 2022
Knowledge of how ecocultural landscapes co-evolved, how they were shaped and maintained by local people, and what processes disturbed the landscape should inform the planning, execution, and significance of restoration projects. Indigenous stewardship has resulted in legacies of diverse and productive ecocultural environments. Often, this stewardship has been guided by place-based values, which are informed by Indigenous knowledge, beliefs of equal respect for all ecosystem components, and conduct that sustains resource productivity. We propose that cultivating place-based values in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Keepers of the Flame: Supporting the Revitalization of Indigenous Cultural Burning
Year: 2021
The revitalization of cultural burning is a priority for many Native American tribes and for agencies and organizations that recognize the cultural and ecological importance of this practice. Traditional fire practitioners are working to resist the impact of settler colonialism and reestablish cultural burning to promote traditional foods and materials, exercise their sovereignty in land management, and strengthen their communities’ cultural, physical and emotional wellbeing. Despite broad support for cultural burning, the needs of practitioners are often poorly understood by non-Native…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Indigenous Fire Stewardship: Federal/Tribal Partnerships for Wildland Fire Research and Management
Year: 2021
Over millennia, many indigenous and Tribal peoples in North America’s fire-prone ecosystems developed sophisticated relationships with wildland fire that continue today. This article introduces philosophical, conceptual, and operational approaches to working with American Indians through research and management partnerships in the fields of wildland fire, forestry, and fuels, with applications to climate change and forest landscape restoration strategies (Mansourian and others 2019). Of central importance are respectful collaborative relationships among the various parties (Tribes, agencies,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Repeated fall prescribed fire in previously thinned Pinus ponderosa increases growth and resistance to other disturbances
Year: 2021
In western North America beginning in the late 19th century, fire suppression and other factors resulted in dense ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests that are now prone to high severity wildfire, insect attack, and root diseases. Thinning and prescribed fire are commonly used to remove small trees, fire-intolerant tree species, and shrubs, and to reduce surface and aerial fuels. These treatments can be effective at lowering future fire severity, but prescribed burns must be periodically repeated to maintain favorable conditions and are feasible only outside the historical summer wildfire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Repeated fall prescribed fire in previously thinned Pinus ponderosa increases growth and resistance to other disturbances
Year: 2021
In western North America beginning in the late 19th century, fire suppression and other factors resulted in denseponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) forests that are now prone to high severity wildfire, insect attack, and rootdiseases. Thinning and prescribed fire are commonly used to remove small trees, fire-intolerant tree species, andshrubs, and to reduce surface and aerial fuels. These treatments can be effective at lowering future fire severity,but prescribed burns must be periodically repeated to maintain favorable conditions and are feasible only outsidethe historical summer wildfire…
Publication Type: Journal Article