Research Database
Displaying 81 - 100 of 117
2014 Quadrennial Fire Review Final Report
Year: 2015
The Quadrennial Fire Review (QFR) is a strategic assessmentprocess conducted every four years to evaluate currentwildland fire management community strategies andcapabilities against best estimates of the future environment.This report is the third iteration of the QFR, which beganin 2005. It is not a formal policy or decision document,but rather a strategic evaluation of the long-range directionof wildland fire management. It looks far into the future toexplore potential risks, challenges, and opportunities thatmay affect our ability to meet our mission. Moreover, it willinform our strategic…
Publication Type: Report
A new approach to evaluate forest structure restoration needs across Oregon and Washington
Year: 2015
Widespread habitat degradation and uncharacteristic fire, insect, and disease outbreaks in forests across the western United States have led to highly publicized calls to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration. Despite these calls, we frequently lack a comprehensive understanding of forest restoration needs. In this study we demonstrate a new approach for evaluating where, how much, and what types of restoration are needed to move present day landscape scale forest structure towards a Natural Range of Variability (NRV) across eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, and southwestern…
Publication Type: Journal Article
An Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy
Year: 2015
An Integrated Rangeland Fire Management Strategy (the Strategy) is intended to improve the efficiency and efficacy of actions to address rangeland fire, to better prevent and suppress rangeland fire, and improve efforts to restore fire-impacted landscapes. These activities involve targeted investments to enhance efforts to manage rangeland fire in specific portions of the Great Basin region, consistent with efforts of tribal, state, and other lands, and in keeping with the trust responsibilities to Indian tribes and other statutory obligations.
Publication Type: Report
Severity of an uncharacteristically large wildfire, the Rim Fire, in forests with relatively restored frequent fire regimes
Year: 2014
The 2013 Rim Fire, originating on Forest Service land, burned into old-growth forests within Yosemite National Park with relatively restored frequent-fire regimes (¡Ý2 predominantly low and moderate severity burns within the last 35 years). Forest structure and fuels data were collected in the field 3-4 years before the fire, providing a rare chance to use pre-existing plot data to analyze fire effects. We used regression tree and random forests analysis to examine the influence of forest structure, fuel, fire history, topographic and weather conditions on observed fire severity in the Rim…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Landscape restoration of a forest with a historically mixed-severity fire regime: What was the historical landscape pattern of forest and openings?
Year: 2014
Forest management of dry forests in the western US that historically experienced mixed-severity fire regimes is increasingly focused on landscape-scale restoration. However, this restoration effort is constrained by historic range of variation (HRV) reference conditions that lack information concerning the spatial configuration of these forests at intermediate scales (approximately 0.01–100 ha). I used reconstruction methods to map historical (1860) pattern of ponderosa pine-Douglas-fir forests along twenty 1 km long transects on Colorado’s Front Range and compared pre-settlement opening and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Climate, fire size, and biophysical setting control fire severity and spatial pattern in the northern Cascade Range, USA
Year: 2014
Warmer and drier climate over the past few decades has brought larger fire sizes and increased annual area burned in forested ecosystems of western North America, and continued increases in annual area burned are expected due to climate change. As warming continues, fires may also increase in severity and produce larger contiguous patches of severely burned areas. We used remotely sensed burn-severity data from 125 fires in the northern Cascade Range of Washington, USA, to explore relationships between fire size, severity, and the spatial pattern of severity. We examined relationships between…
Publication Type: Journal Article
State of Fire
Year: 2014
Describing the 2013 summer fire season, the Oregon Department of Forestry called it “epic.” On those lands protected by the state, it was the costliest ever, and the first time in over 60 years that more than 100,000 acres burned. Oregon’s forests are changing. The management objectives and priorities of federal and private landowners are evolving. Drought has afflicted parts of the state, and climate trends are making fire seasons longer and more intense. And in the wildland-urban interface, more homes have been built in the path of wildfire. The ways Oregonians prevent, fight, manage and,…
Publication Type: Report
The Ecology and Management of Moist Mixed-Conifer Forests in Eastern Oregon and Washington: a Synthesis of the Relevant Biophysical Science and Implications for Future Land Management
Year: 2014
Land managers in the Pacific Northwest have reported a need for updated scientific information on the ecology and management of mixed-conifer forests east of the Cascade Range in Oregon and Washington. Of particular concern are the moist mixed-conifer forests, which have become drought-stressed and vulnerable to high-severity fire after decades of human disturbances and climate warming. This synthesis responds to this need. We present a compilation of existing research across multiple natural resource issues, including disturbance regimes, the legacy effects of past management actions,…
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 decisionmaking. As this research has matured, there has been a recognition of the need to examine the full body of resulting…
Publication Type: Report
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
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
Spatially extensive reconstructions show variable-severity fire and heterogeneous structure in historical western United States dry forests
Year: 2012
Aim Wildfire is often considered more severe now than historically in dry forests of the western United States. Tree-ring reconstructions, which suggest that historical dry forests were park-like with large, old trees maintained by low-severity fires,are from small, scattered studies. To overcome this limitation, we developed spatially comprehensive reconstructions across 927,000 ha in four landscapes, using anew method based on land surveys from c. 1880. Location Dry forests of the western United States. Methods We reconstructed forest structure for four large dry-forest landscapes using…
Publication Type: Journal Article
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
Climate Change, Forests, Fire, Water, and Fish: Building Resilient Landscapes, Streams, and Managers
Year: 2012
Fire will play an important role in shaping forest and stream ecosystems as the climate changes. Historic observations show increased dryness accompanying more widespread fire and forest die-off. These events punctuate gradual changes to ecosystems and sometimes generate stepwise changes in ecosystems. Climate vulnerability assessments need to account for fire in their calculus. The biophysical template of forest and stream ecosystems determines much of their response to fire. This report describes the framework of how fire and climate change work together to affect forest and fish…
Publication Type: Report
Ecological effects of alternative fuel-reduction treatments: highlights of the National Fire and Fire Surrogate study (FSS)
Year: 2012
The 12-site National Fire and Fire Surrogate study (FFS) was a multivariate experiment that evaluated ecological consequences of alternative fuel-reduction treatments in seasonally dry forests of the US. Each site was a replicated experiment with a common design that compared an un-manipulated control, prescribed fire, mechanical and mechanical + fire treatments. Variables within the vegetation, fuelbed, forest floor and soil, bark beetles, tree diseases and wildlife were measured in 10-ha stands, and ecological response was compared among treatments at the site level, and across sites, to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Drought-Driven Disturbance History Characterizes a Southern Rocky Mountain Subalpine Forest
Year: 2012
The view that subalpine forest vegetation dynamics in western North America are "driven" by a particular disturbance type (i.e. fire) has shaped our understanding of their disturbance regimes. In the wake of a recent (1990s) landscape-extent spruce beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis Kirby) outbreak in the southern Rocky Mountains, we re-examined the temporal continuity in disturbance types and interactions and the possible role of drought on their occurrence by reconstructing antecedent disturbances for 11 sites across the Markagunt Plateau, southern Utah, USA. Multiple consistent lines of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Long-term perspective on wildfires in the western USA
Year: 2012
Understanding the causes and consequences of wildfires in forests of the western United States requires integrated information about fire, climate changes, and human activity on multiple temporal scales. We use sedimentary charcoal accumulation rates to construct long-term variations in fire during the past 3,000 y in the American West and compare this record to independent firehistory data from historical records and fire scars. There has been a slight decline in burning over the past 3,000 y, with the lowest levels attained during the 20th century and during the Little Ice Age (LIA, ca.…
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