Research Database
Displaying 81 - 100 of 193
Climate and wildfire adaptation of inland Northwest US forests
Year: 2021
After a century of intensive logging, federal forest management policies were developed in the 1990s to protect remaining large trees and old forests in the western US. Today, due to rapidly changing ecological conditions, new threats and uncertainties, and scientific advancements, some policy provisions are being re-evaluated in interior Oregon and Washington. The case for re- evaluation is clearest where small- to large-sized, immature, fast-growing, fire-intolerant trees have filled in forests after both a long period of fire exclusion and the harvest of large, old trees. This infilling…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Episodic occurrence of favourable weather constrains recovery of a cold desert shrubland after fire
Year: 2021
1. Key to the long-term resilience of dryland ecosystems is the recovery of foundation plant species following disturbance. In ecosystems with high interannual weather variability, understanding the influence of short-term environmental conditions on establishment of foundation species is essential for identifying vulnerable landscapes and developing restoration strategies. We asked how annual environmental conditions affect post-fire establishment of Artemisia tridentata, a shrub species that dominates landscapes across much of the western United States, and evaluated the influence of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
How does tree regeneration respond to mixed‐severity fire in the western Oregon Cascades, USA?
Year: 2020
Dendroecological studies of historical tree recruitment patterns suggest mixed‐severity fire effects are common in Douglas‐fir/western hemlock forests of the Pacific Northwest (PNW), USA, but empirical studies linking observed fire severity to tree regeneration response are needed to expand our understanding into the functional role of fire in this forest type. Recent increases in mixed‐severity fires offered this opportunity, so we quantified the abundance, spatial distribution, species richness, and community composition of regenerating trees across a mixed‐severity fire gradient (unburned–…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire severity and postfire salvage harvest effects on long-term forest regeneration
Year: 2020
Following a wildfire, regeneration to forest can take decades to centuries and is no longerassured in many western U.S. environments given escalating wildfire severity and warming trends. Afterlarge fire years, managers prioritize where to allocate scarce planting resources, often with limited informationon the factors that drive successful forest establishment. Where occurring, long-term effects of postfiresalvage operations can increase uncertainty of establishment. Here, we collected field data on postfireregeneration patterns within 13- to 28-yr-old burned patches in eastern Washington…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Changing wildfire, changing forests: the effects of climate change on fire regimes and vegetation in the Pacific Northwest, USA
Year: 2020
Wildfires in the Pacific Northwest (Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and western Montana, USA) have been immense in recent years, capturing the attention of resource managers, fire scientists, and the general public. This paper synthesizes understanding of the potential effects of changing climate and fire regimes on Pacific Northwest forests, including effects on disturbance and stress interactions, forest structure and composition, and post-fire ecological processes. We frame this information in a risk assessment context, and conclude with management implications and future research needs.
Publication Type: Journal Article
Pre-season fire management planning: the use of Potential Operational Delineations to prepare for wildland fire events
Year: 2020
US fire scientists are developing Potential Wildfire Operational Delineations, also known as ‘PODs’, as a pre-fire season planning tool to promote safe and effective wildland fire response, strengthen risk management approaches in fire management and better align fire management objectives. PODs are a collaborative planning approach based on spatial analytics to identify potential wildfire control lines and assess the desirability of fire before ignition. They offer the opportunity to apply risk management principles with partners before the compressed timeframe of incident response. We…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Walking through a "phoenix landscape": hiker surveys reveal nuanced perceptions of wildfire effects
Year: 2020
Public opinion of wildfire is often perceived to be negative and in support of fire suppression, even though research suggests public opinions have become more positive over the past few decades. However, most prior work on this topic has focused on homeowners in forested regions. In this study, we shift the lens to hikers in a chaparral- and oak-savannah-dominated landscape that burned at high severity in 2015. We surveyed hikers before and after their hike about their familiarity and perceptions of local fire, and wildfire in the nation at large. We found hikers were familiar with topics…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Expanding the invasion footprint: Ventenata dubia and relationships to wildfire, environment, and plant communities in the Blue Mountains of the Inland Northwest, USA
Year: 2020
Questions: A recently introduced non-native annual grass, Ventenata dubia, is challenging previous conceptions of community resistance in forest mosaic communities in the Inland Northwest. However, little is known of the drivers and potential ecological impacts of this rapidly expanding species. Here we (1) identify abiotic and biotic habitat characteristics associated with the V. dubia invasion and examine how these differ between V. dubia and other problematic non-native annual grasses, Bromustectorum and Taeniatherum caput-medusae; and (2) determine how burning influences relationships…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire decision support tools: an exploratory study of use in the United States
Year: 2020
In the United States, many decision support tools exist to provide fire managers with weather and fire behaviour information to inform and facilitate risk-based decision-making. Relatively little is known about how managers use these tools in the field and when and how they may serve to influence decisions. To address this gap, we conducted exploratory interviews with 27 wildfire management and fire weather professionals across the United States. Results reveal that barriers to the use of decision support tools are structural and social. Specifically, fire weather and behaviour models may not…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire recovery as a “hot moment” for creating fire-adapted communities
Year: 2020
Recent decades have witnessed an escalation in the social, economic, and ecological impacts of wildfires worldwide. Wildfire losses stem from the complex interplay of social and ecological forces at multiple scales, including global climate change, regional wildfire regimes altered by human activities, and locally managed wildland-urban interface (WUI) zones where homes increasingly encroach upon wildland vegetation. The coupled nature of the human-ecological system is precisely what makes reducing wildfire risks challenging. As losses from wildfire have accelerated, an emerging research and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Bridging the research-management gap: landscape science in practice on public lands in the western United States
Year: 2020
Landscape science relies on foundational concepts of landscape ecology and seeks to understand the physical, biological, and human components of ecosystems to support land management decision-making. Incorporating landscape science into land management decisions, however, remains challenging. Many lands in the western United States are federally owned and managed for multiple uses, including recreation, conservation, and energy development. We argue for stronger integration of landscape science into the management of these public lands. We open by outlining the relevance of landscape science…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Effects of post-fire management on dead woody fuel dynamics and stand structure in a severely burned mixed-conifer forest, in northeastern Washington State, USA
Year: 2020
The increasing amount of high-severity wildfire in historical low and mixed-severity fire regimes in western US forests has created a need to better understand the ecological effects of different post fire management approaches. For three different salvage prescriptions, we quantified change in stand structural metrics (snag densities and snag basal areas), dead woody fuel loadings, tree regeneration survival, and percentage change in vegetation cover before and after post-fire logging 1 year after the 2015 Stickpin Wildfire on the Colville National Forest in northeastern Washington State, USA. In a…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Influence of fire refugia spatial pattern on post-fire forest recovery in Oregon’s Blue Mountains
Year: 2019
Context Fire regimes in many dry forests of western North America are substantially different from historical conditions, and there is concern about the ability of these forests to recover following severe wildfire. Fire refugia, unburned or low-severity burned patches where trees survived fire, may serve as essential propagule sources that enable forest regeneration. Objectives To quantify the influence of fire refugia spatial pattern and other biophysical factors on the process of post-fire tree regeneration; in particular examining both the proximity and density of surrounding refugia to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Evaluating Model Predictions of Fire Induced Tree Mortality Using Wildfire-Affected Forest Inventory Measurements
Year: 2019
Forest land managers rely on predictions of tree mortality generated from fire behavior models to identify stands for post-fire salvage and to design fuel reduction treatments that reduce mortality. A key challenge in improving the accuracy of these predictions is selecting appropriate wind and fuel moisture inputs. Our objective was to evaluate postfire mortality predictions using the Forest Vegetation Simulator Fire and Fuels Extension (FVS-FFE) to determine if using representative fire-weather data would improve prediction accuracy over two default weather scenarios. We used pre- and post-…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Spatial and temporal assessment of responder exposure to snag hazards in post-fire environments
Year: 2019
Researchers and managers increasingly recognize enterprise risk management as critical to addressing contemporary fire management challenges. Quantitative wildfire risk assessments contribute by parsing and mapping potentially contradictory positive and negative fire effects. However, these assessments disregard risks to fire responders because they only address social and ecological resources and assets. In this study, we begin to overcome this deficiency by using a novel modeling approach that integrates remote sensing, field inventories, imputation-based vegetation modeling, and empirical…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Forest Service fire management and the elusiveness of change
Year: 2019
There is broad recognition that fire management in the United States must fundamentally change and depart from practices that have led to an over-emphasis on suppression and limited the presence of fire in forested ecosystems. In this paper, we look at competing problem definitions in US Forest Service policy for fire management, the presence of goal ambiguity, and how these factors can explain why changes in fire management have been elusive, despite policy change. We consider US Forest Service fire policies, performance incentives, and decision-making processes for two sides of the agency:…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Tree regeneration following wildfires in the western US: a review
Year: 2019
Background: Wildfires, like many disturbances, can be catalysts for ecosystem change. Given projected climate change, tree regeneration declines and ecosystem shifts following severe wildfires are predicted. We reviewed scientific literature on post-fire tree regeneration to understand where and why no or few trees established. We wished to distinguish sites that won’t regenerate to trees because of changing climate from sites where trees could grow post fire if they had a seed source or were planted, thus supporting forest ecosystem services for society and nature, such as timber supply,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Making the Transition from Science Delivery to Knowledge Coproduction in Boundary Spanning: A Case Study of the Alaska Fire Science Consortium
Year: 2019
Boundary organizations facilitate two-way, sustained interaction and communication between research and practitioner spheres, deliver existing science, and develop new, actionable scientific information to address emerging social–ecological questions applicable to decision-making. There is an increasing emphasis on the role of boundary organizations in facilitating knowledge coproduction, which is collaborative research with end users to develop actionable scientific information for decision-making. However, a deeper understanding of how boundary organizations and knowledge coproduction work…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Examining post-fire vegetation recovery with Landsat time series analysis in three western North American forest types
Year: 2019
Background: Few studies have examined post-fire vegetation recovery in temperate forest ecosystems with Landsat time series analysis. We analyzed time series of Normalized Burn Ratio (NBR) derived from LandTrendr spectral-temporal segmentation fitting to examine post-fire NBR recovery for several wildfires that occurred in three different coniferous forest types in western North America during the years 2000 to 2007. We summarized NBR recovery trends, and investigated the influence of burn severity, post-fire climate, and topography on post-fire vegetation recovery via random forest (RF)…
Publication Type: Journal Article
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