Research Database
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16
Collaborations and capacities to transform fire management
Year: 2019
Wildfires bring stark attention to interactions among climate change, fire, forests, and livelihoods, prompting urgent calls for change from policy-makers and the public. Management options vary, but in many fire-adapted forests, the message from the scientific community is clear: Adapt to living with fire, reduce fuels and homes in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), and strategically restore fire to ecosystems (1–4). Yet, changes to fire management outcomes have been elusive. For example, across the primarily public forestlands of the U.S. West, prescribed fires (intentionally lighted fires…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Prescribed fire regimes subtly alter ponderosa pine forest plant community structure
Year: 2019
Prescribed fire is an active management tool used to address wildfire hazard and ecological concerns associated with fire exclusion and suppression over the past century. Despite widespread application in the United States, there is considerable inconsistency and lack of information regarding the extent to which specific outcomes are achieved and under what prescribed fire regimes, particularly in regard to ecological goals related to plant community structure. We quantify differences and patterns in plant functional group abundance, species richness and diversity, and other key forest…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The missing fire: quantifying human exclusion of wildfire in Pacific Northwest forests, USA
Year: 2019
Western U.S. wildfire area burned has increased dramatically over the last half‐century. How contemporary extent and severity of wildfires compare to the pre‐settlement patterns to which ecosystems are adapted is debated. We compared large wildfires in Pacific Northwest forests from 1984 to 2015 to modeled historic fire regimes. Despite late twentieth‐century increases in area burned, we show that Pacific Northwest forests have experienced an order of magnitude less fire over 32 yr than expected under historic fire regimes. Within fires that have burned, severity distributions are…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Historical patterns of fire severity and forest structure and composition in a landscape structured by frequent large fires: Pumice Plateau ecoregion, Oregon, USA
Year: 2019
Context Lack of quantitative observations of extent, frequency, and severity of large historical fires constrains awareness of departure of contemporary conditions from those that demonstrated resistance and resilience to frequent fire and recurring drought. Objectives Compare historical and contemporary fire and forest conditions for a dry forest landscape with few barriers to fire spread. Methods Quantify differences in (1) historical (1700–1918) and contemporary (1985–2015) fire extent, fire rotation, and stand-replacing fire and (2) historical (1914–1924) and contemporary (2012) forest…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Post-fire management affects species composition but not Douglas-fir regeneration in the Klamath Mountains
Year: 2019
Ensuring adequate conifer regeneration after high severity wildfires is a common objective for ecologists and forest managers. In the Klamath region of Oregon and California, a global hotspot of botanical biodiversity, concerns over regeneration have led to post-fire management on many sites, which involves salvage logging followed by site preparation, conifer planting, and manual shrub release. To quantify the impacts of post-fire management, we sampled 62 field sites that burned at high severity nearly 20 years ago in the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountain bioregion, stratifying by management and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Predicting post-fire attack of red turpentine or western pine beetle on ponderosa pine and its impact on mortality probability in Pacific Northwest forests
Year: 2019
In ponderosa pine forests of western North America, wildfires are becoming more frequent and affecting larger areas, while prescribed fire is increasingly used to reduce fuels and mitigate potential wildfire severity. Both fire types leave trees that initially survive their burn injuries, but will eventually die. Predicting delayed tree mortality has received considerable research attention to aid in post-fire planning and management. The amount of crown scorched is recognized as the most useful variable for discriminating between trees that live or die, but models gain discrimination with…
Publication Type: Journal Article
What drives ponderosa pine regeneration following wildfire in the western United States?
Year: 2019
Ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Lawson & C. Lawson) is a prominent tree species in forests of the western United States. Wildfire activity in ponderosa pine dominated or co-dominated forests has increased dramatically in recent decades, with these recent wildfires often burning in an uncharacteristic manner due to past land management activities and changing climate. The structure and function of vegetative communities that develop following recent wildfires are highly contingent on ponderosa pine regeneration, making it important that the factors influencing this regeneration be…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Cost-effective fuel treatment planning: a theoretical justification and case study
Year: 2019
Modelling the spatial prioritisation of fuel treatments and their net effect on values at risk is an important area for applied work as economic damages from wildfire continue to grow. We model and demonstrate a cost-effective fuel treatment planning algorithm using two ecosystem services as benefits for which fuel treatments are prioritised. We create a surface of expected fuel treatment costs to incorporate the heterogeneity in factors affecting the revenue and costs of fuel treatments, and then prioritise treatments based on a cost-effectiveness ratio to maximise the averted loss of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire deficits have increased drought‐sensitivity in dry conifer forests; fire frequency and tree‐ring carbon isotope evidence from Central Oregon
Year: 2019
A century of fire suppression across the Western US has led to more crowded forests and increased competition for resources. Studies of forest thinning or stand conditions after mortality events have provided indirect evidence for how competition can promote drought stress and predispose forests to severe fire and/or bark beetle outbreaks. Here we demonstrate linkages between fire deficits and increasing drought stress through analyses of annually resolved tree‐ring growth, fire scars, and carbon isotope discrimination (Δ13C) across a dry mixed‐conifer forest landscape. Fire deficits across…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Out of the Ashes: Ecological Resilience to Extreme Wildfire, Prescribed Burns, and Indigenous Burning in Ecosystems
Year: 2019
Until Euro-American colonization, Indigenous people used fire to modify eco-cultural systems, developing robust Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK). Since 1980, wildfire activity has increased due to fire suppression and climate change. In 2017, in Waterton Lakes National Park, AB, the Kenow wildfire burned 19,303 ha, exhibiting extreme fire behavior. It affected forests and the Eskerine Complex, a native-grass prairie treated with prescribed burns since 2006 to reduce aspen (Populus tremuloides) encroachment linked to fire suppression and bison (Bison bison bison) extirpation. One year…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Designing Operationally Relevant Daily Large Fire Containment Strategies Using Risk Assessment Results
Year: 2019
In this study, we aim to advance the optimization of daily large fire containment strategies for ground-based suppression resources by leveraging fire risk assessment results commonly used by fire managers in the western USA. We begin from an existing decision framework that spatially overlays fire risk assessment results with pre-identified potential wildland fire operational delineations (PODs), and then clusters PODs into a response POD (rPOD) using a mixed integer program (MIP) model to minimize expected loss. We improve and expand upon this decision framework through enhanced fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire and Forest Management in Montane Forests of the Northwestern States and California, USA
Year: 2019
We reviewed forest management in the mountainous regions of several northwestern states and California in the United States and how it has impacted current issues facing these forests. We focused on the large-scale activities like fire suppression and logging which resulted in landscape level changes. We divided the region into two main forests types; wet, like the forests in the Pacific Northwest, and dry, like the forests in the Sierra Nevada and Cascade ranges. In the wet forests, the history of intensive logging shaped the current forest structure, while fire suppression played a more…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Severe Fire Danger Index: A Forecastable Metric to Inform Firefighter and Community Wildfire Risk Management
Year: 2019
Despite major advances in numerical weather prediction, few resources exist to forecast wildland fire danger conditions to support operational fire management decisions and community early-warning systems. Here we present the development and evaluation of a spatial fire danger index that can be used to assess historical events, forecast extreme fire danger, and communicate those conditions to both firefighters and the public. It uses two United States National Fire Danger Rating System indices that are related to fire intensity and spread potential. These indices are normalized, combined, and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Role of Previous Fires in the Management and Expenditures of Subsequent Large Wildfires
Year: 2019
Previously burned areas can influence the occurrence, extent, and severity of subsequent wildfires, which may influence expenditures on large fires. We develop a conceptual model of how interactions of fires with previously burned areas may influence fire management, fire behavior, expenditures, and test hypotheses using regression models of wildfire size and suppression expenditures. Using a sample of 722 large fires from the western United States, we observe whether a fire interacted with a previous fire, the percent area of fires burned by previous fires, and the percent perimeter overlap…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Policy tools to address scale mismatches: insights from U.S. forest governance
Year: 2019
Recent literature has highlighted the growing array of scale mismatches in environmental governance and offered policy design principles for improved governance approaches. A next step is to develop our understanding of specific policy tools that can address scale mismatches. This paper reviews the range and importance of scale-related challenges and solutions in environmental governance, situating this discussion in the context of forest governance. We then tackle the matter of policy tools to address scale mismatches, by synthesizing findings from recent policy research on two…
Publication Type: Journal Article
To Masticate or Not: Useful Tips for Treating Forest, Woodland, and Shrubland Vegetation
Year: 2019
Forest managers use mastication to grind or shed vegetation to remove competition, prepare a site for natural or artificial regeneration, or release sapling-sized trees; or they use mastication to convert ladder fuels to surface fuels and enhance decomposition of biomass. However, determining the best mastication configuration within the context of management objectives and site limitations is challenging. This report synthesizes our current knowledge on mastication as a forest management tool. We found that excavators, skid steers, and tractors can all be carrier machines and different types…
Publication Type: Report