Research Database
Displaying 41 - 60 of 86
A synthesis of post-fire Burned Area Reports from 1972 to 2009 for western US Forest Service lands: trends in wildfire characteristics and post-fire stabilisation treatments and expenditures
Year: 2014
Over 1200 post-fire assessment and treatment implementation reports from four decades (1970s–2000s) of western US forest fires have been examined to identify decadal patterns in fire characteristics and the justifications and expenditures for the post-fire treatments. The main trends found were: (1) the area burned by wildfire increased over time and the rate of increase accelerated after 1990; (2) the proportions of burned area assessed as low, moderate and high burn severity likely have remained fairly constant over time, but the use of satellite imagery that began c. 2000 increased the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Synthesis on crown fire behavior in conifer forests
Year: 2014
Mass media images of raging crown fires have affected how many people view their wildlands. Flames surge and leap dozens and even hundreds of feet into the air; planes zoom above the flames releasing streams of brightly colored retardant; and giant pyrocumulonimbus clouds tower over the landscape. No doubt, it’s dramatic lead story material. But, to many, and especially those in the wildland fire community, this is serious business. Tens of thousands of acres are severely burned in a single day; homes and lives are endangered; and ecosystems are changed dramatically for decades or longer.…
Publication Type: Journal
Graduate Research Innovation Awards Encourage Young Scientists to Ask Bold Questions
Year: 2014
The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP), in partnership with the Association for Fire Ecology,offers Graduate Research Innovation (GRIN) awards yearly to a handful of top-quality graduatestudents conducting research in fire science. GRIN awards are intended to nurture the next generationof fire and fuels scientists and managers, enhance their professional development,help them become engaged with their community of peers, and equip them to tacklethe fire and fuels management challenges of today and tomorrow.
Publication Type: Report
Trust: A planning guide for wildfire agencies & practitioners
Year: 2014
This planning guide is the outcome of an international collaboration of researchers and practitioners/field managers working in communities at risk of wildfire in three countries. Initially, the team of social scientists from Australia, Canada, and the United States utilized the collective research literature to examine factors that influence stakeholder trust. A working draft of this document was shared with experienced agency personnel and community leaders previous to interactive workshops and field visits in each country. This allowed for deliberations of the essential features of…
Publication Type: Report
Assessing the Compatibility of Fuel Treatments, Wildfire Risk, and Conservation of Northern Spotted Owl Habitats and Populations in the Eastern Cascades: A Multi-Scale Analysis
Year: 2014
National Forests in the dry forest provinces on the east‐side of the Oregon and Washington Cascades have been managed under the guidelines of local Forest Plans and the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP), both of which specify large areas of late‐successional reserves (LSRs). In contrast, the recently‐released USDI Fish and Wildlife Service Revised Recovery Plan (RRP) for the Northern Spotted Owl (NSO) calls for development of dynamic and shifting mosaics in the dry forests, and retention of LSRs in moist forests of eastern Cascades of Oregon and Washington, to address NSO habitat and wildfire…
Publication Type: Report
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
Climate change tipping points: A point of no return?
Year: 2013
Summer 2012 saw records fall for intensity of drought and number, size, and cost of wildfires in the Central and Western United States, and the climate forecast calls for more of the same in the near and distant future. When wildfire breaks out, emergency responders decide their immediate strategy based on past experience and quick judgment calls. But in the long term, land managers need to plan for a warmer climate on a time scale of decades, or even a century or more, to better reflect the life span of trees and forests. Studies supported by the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) are…
Publication Type: Report
Fuel Treatments and Fire Severity: A Meta-Analysis
Year: 2013
We employed meta-analysis and information theory to synthesize findings reported in the literature on the effects of fuel treatments on subsequent fire intensity and severity. Data were compiled from 19 publications that reported observed fire responses from 62 treated versus untreated contrasts. Effect sizes varied widely and the most informative grouping of studies distinguished three vegetation types and three types of fuel treatment. The resultant meta-analytic model is highly significant (p<0.001) and explains 78% of the variability in reported observations of fuel treatment…
Publication Type: Report
Capturing Fire: RxCadre Takes Fire Measurements to a Whole New Level
Year: 2013
Models of fire behavior and effects do not always make accurate predictions, and there is not enough systematically gathered data to validate them. To help advance fire behavior and fire effects model development, the Joint Fire Science Program is helping fund the RxCADRE, which is made up of scientists from the U.S. Forest Service and several universities who orchestrate and collect data on prescribed burns in the southeastern United States. The RxCADRE-prescribed burns are yielding a comprehensive dataset of fire behavior, fire effects, and smoke chemistry and dynamics, with measurements…
Publication Type: Report
Fire regimes of quaking aspen in the Mountain West
Year: 2013
Quaking aspen, the most widespread tree species in North America, reproduces primarily by resprouting from roots. In some stands, mortality from fire encourages sprouting and prevents conifers from eventually replacing aspen. In other areas, aspen can form stable communities that do not require fire to regenerate or persist. USGS fire ecologist Doug Shinneman and colleagues reviewed literature about aspen populations and fire, summarized research findings, and suggested a classification system for aspen across the western mountainous United States. The scientists proposed five aspen “fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Crown fire behavior characteristics and prediction in conifer forests: a state-of-knowledge synthesis
Year: 2013
Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) project 09-S-03-1 was undertaken in response to JFSP Project Announcement No. FA-RFA09-0002 with respect to a synthesis on extreme fire behavior or more specifically a review and analysis of the literature dealing with certain features of crown fire behavior in conifer forests in the United States and adjacent regions of Canada. The key findings presented are organized along nine topical areas: types of crown fires; crown fire initiation; crown fire propagation; crown fire rate of spread; crown fire intensity and flame zone characteristics; crown fire area…
Publication Type: Report
A Comprehensive Guide to Fuel Management practices for Dry Mixed Conifer Forests in the Northwestern United States
Year: 2012
This guide describes the benefits, opportunities, and trade-offs concerning fuel treatments in the dry mixed conifer forests of northern California and the Klamath Mountains, Pacific Northwest Interior, northern and central Rocky Mountains, and Utah. Multiple interacting disturbances and diverse physical settings have created a forest mosaic with historically low- to mixed-severity fire regimes. Analysis of forest inventory data found nearly 80 percent of these forests rate hazardous by at least one measure and 20 to 30 percent rate hazardous by multiple measures. Modeled mechanical…
Publication Type: Report
Atmospheric Interactions with Wildland Fire Behaviour I. Basic Surface Interactions, Vertical Profiles and Synoptic Structures
Year: 2012
This paper is the first of two reviewing scientific literature from 100 years of research addressing interactions between the atmosphere and fire behaviour. These papers consider research on the interactions between the fuels burning at any instant and the atmosphere, and the interactions between the atmosphere and those fuels that will eventually burn in a given fire. This first paper reviews the progression from the surface atmospheric properties of temperature, humidity and wind to horizontal and vertical synoptic structures and ends with vertical atmospheric profiles. (The companion paper…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Bark Beetles and Fire: Two forces of nature transforming western forests
Year: 2012
Bark beetles are chewing a wide swath through forests across North America. Over the past few years, infestations have become epidemic in lodgepole and spruce-fir forests of the Intermountain West. The resulting extensive acreages of dead trees are alarming the public and raising concern about risk of severe fire. Researchers supported by the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) are examining the complicated relationship between bark beetles and wildfire, the two most influential natural disturbance agents in these forests. Are the beetles setting the stage for larger, more severe wildfires? And…
Publication Type: Report
A Review of Recent Advances in Risk Analysis for Wildfire Management
Year: 2012
Risk analysis evolved out of the need to make decisions concerning highly stochastic events, and is well suited to analyse the timing, location and potential effects of wildfires. Over the past 10 years, the application of risk analysis to wildland fire management has seen steady growth with new risk-based analytical tools that support a wide range of fire and fuels management planning scales from individual incidents to national, strategic interagency programs. After a brief review of the three components of fire risk – likelihood, intensity and effects – this paper reviews recent advances…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Cheating Cheatgrass: New research to combat a wily invasive weed
Year: 2012
Cheatgrass and its cousin, red brome, are exotic annual grasses that have invaded and altered ecosystem dynamics in more than 41 million acres of desert shrublands between the Rockies and the Cascade-Sierra chain. A fungus naturally associated with these Bromus species has been found lethal to the plants’ soil-banked dormant seeds. Supported by the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP), researchers Susan Meyer, Phil Allen, and Julie Beckstead cultured this fungus, Pyrenophora semeniperda, in the laboratory and developed an experimental field application that, in some trials, killed all the…
Publication Type: Report
Meta-analysis of avian and small-mammal response to fire severity and fire surrogate treatments in US fire-prone forests
Year: 2012
Management in fire-prone ecosystems relies widely upon application of prescribed fire and/or fire surrogate (e.g., forest thinning) treatments to maintain biodiversity and ecosystem function. Recently, published literature examining wildlife response to fire and fire management has increased rapidly. However, none of this literature has been synthesized quantitatively, precluding assessment of consistent patterns of wildlife response among treatment types. Using meta-analysis, we examined the scientific literature on vertebrate demographic responses to burn severity (low/moderate, high), fire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Smoke Science Plan: The Path Forward
Year: 2012
Wildland fire managers face increasingly steep challenges to meet air quality standards while planning prescribed fire and its inevitable smoke emissions. The goals of sound fire management practices, including fuel load reduction through prescribed burning, are often challenged by the need to minimize smoke impacts on communities. Wildfires, of course, also produce smoke, so managers must constantly weigh the benefits and risks of controlled burns and their generated emissions against potential wildfires and their generated emissions and must communicate those benefits and risks to the…
Publication Type: Report
Predicting Dry Lightning Risk Nationwide
Year: 2012
Meteorologists developed two formulas to predict the probability of dry lightning throughout the continental United States and Alaska and parts of Canada. Predictions are made daily and are accessible through the web at http://www.airfire.org/tools/daily-fi re-weather/dry-lightning-probability. The emphasis is on the western United States, where dry lightning is a more common occurrence. Predictions are based on identifying days on which lightning is expected and separately determining whether there is likely to be at least 1/10th inch of accompanying rain. The formulas are run with the…
Publication Type: Report
Research Perspectives on the Public and Fire Management: A Synthesis of Current Social Science on Eight Essential Questions
Year: 2012
As part of a Joint Fire Science Program project, a team of social scientists reviewed existing fire social science literature to develop a targeted synthesis of scientific knowledge on the following questions: 1. What is the public’s understanding of fire’s role in the ecosystem? 2. Who are trusted sources of information about fire? 3. What are the public’s views of fuels reduction methods, and how do those views vary depending on citizens’ location in the wildland-urban interface or elsewhere? 4. What is the public’s understanding of smoke effects on human health, and what shapes the public’…
Publication Type: Report