Research Database
Displaying 1041 - 1060 of 1415
Fire effects on aquatic ecosystems: an assessment of the current state of the science
Year: 2015
Fire is a prevalent feature of many landscapes and has numerous and complex effects on geological, hydrological, ecological, and economic systems. In some regions, the frequency and intensity of wildfire haveincreased in recent years and are projected to escalate with predicted climatic and landuse changes. In addition, prescribed burns continue to be used in many parts of the world to clear vegetation for development projects,encourage desired vegetation, and reduce fuel loads. Given the prevalence of fire on the landscape, authors of papers in this special series examine the complexities of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Western Water Threatened by Wildfire: It's Not Just A Public Lands Issue
Year: 2015
Water is the arid West’s most precious and most vulnerable resource. Western water allows metropolises to bloom in the desert, it fuels America’s largest agricultural economy and it supports a ski industry worth more than $6 billion to state and local economies (Burakowski and Magnusson, 2012). The delivery of clean and abundant water is extremely sensitive to disaster, whether natural or man-made. As years-long drought conditions across the region reinforce, the water quantity and quality in the West is never certain.
Publication Type: Report
NWFSC Activity Report - Fire Without Borders: Observations, Experiences, and Lessons Learned from the 36-Pit Fire
Year: 2015
The 36-Pit fire near Estacada, OR broke out on September 13, 2014 and spread quickly, burning a total of 5,524 acres. The fire started by a target shooting accident in the 36 Pit quarry. Conditions were very hot and dry when the fire broke out, with temperatures ranging from the upper 80s to the mid-90s, and the relative humidity around 34%. In addition, there were 30 mph winds blowing from the east through the Clackamas River canyon...
Publication Type: Report
Modeling wildfire regimes in forest landscapes: abstracting a complex reality
Year: 2015
Fire is a natural disturbance that is nearly ubiquitous in terrestrial ecosystems. The capacity to burn exists virtually wherever vegetation grows. In some forested landscapes, fire is a principal driver of rapid ecosystem change, resetting succession ( McKenzie et al. 1996a ) and changing wildlife habitat (Cushman et al. 2011 ), hydrology ( Feikema et al. 2013 ), element cycles ( Smithwick 2011 ), and even landforms (Pierce et al. 2004 ). In boreal forests, for example, recurring wildfi res are the main cause of compositional and spatial patterns ( Wein and MacLean 1983 ), where a fi re-…
Publication Type: Book Chapter
Fire-Adapted Communities: The Next Step in Wildfire Preparedness in Klamath County
Year: 2015
This is a manual that helps homeowners and neighborhoods prepare their areas and their homes for wildfire. A fire-adapted community is a community located in a fire-prone area that requires little assistance from firefighters during a wildfire. Residents of these communities accept responsibility for living in a high fire-hazard area. They possess the knowledge and skills to prepare their homes and property to survive wildfire; evacuate early, safely and effectively; and survive, if trapped by wildfire.
Publication Type: Report
Not All Fires are Wild - Understanding Fire and Its Use as a Management Tool
Year: 2015
Historically, fires have played an integral role in the vitality of our forests. Fire changes the landscape by altering population densities...
Publication Type: Report
Before Wildfire Strikes: A Handbook for Homeowners and Communities in Southwest Oregon
Year: 2015
This is a manual that helps homeowners and neighborhoods prepare their areas and their homes for wildfire. A fire-adapted community is a community located in a fire-prone area that requires little assistance from firefighters during a wildfire. Residents of these communities accept responsibility for living in a high fire-hazard area. They possess the knowledge and skills to prepare their homes and property to survive wildfire; evacuate early, safely and effectively; and survive, if trapped by wildfire.
Publication Type: Report
Regional likelihood of very large wildfires over the 21st century across the western United States: Motivation to study individual events like the Rim Fire, a unique opportunity with unprecedented remote sensing data
Year: 2015
Studies project that a warming climate will likely increase wildfire activity in many areas (Westerling and others 2002; Flannigan and others 2005, 2009; Littell and others 2009). These analyses are often of aggregate statistics like annual area burned, which are insufficient for analyzing changes in seasonality of fire events, the temporal resolution useful for fire management and understanding what drives individual events. Stavros and others (in press, a) show that very large wildfires (VLWFs >20,234 ha ~50,000 ac) may account for only the top two percent of all fires burned in the…
Publication Type: Report
Strengthening syntheses on fire: increasing their usefulness for managers
Year: 2015
A synthesis for fire managers summarizes and interprets a body of information, presents its meaning in an objective, unbiased way, and describes its implications for decisionmakers. Following are suggestions for ways to strengthen syntheses on fire and on other natural resource issues: Include managers, scientists, and science delivery specialists in planning, developing, and delivering syntheses; If a synthesis has unique regional components, include someone from each region in the planning team and consider these needs in writing and packaging; Use managers as authors, co-authors, or…
Publication Type: Report
Evaluating crown fire rate of spread predictions from physics-based models
Year: 2015
Modeling the behavior of crown fires is challenging due to the complex set of coupled processes that drive the characteristics of a spreading wildfire and the large range of spatial and temporal scales over which these processes occur. Detailed physics-based modeling approaches such as FIRETEC and the Wildland Urban Interface Fire Dynamics Simulator (WFDS) simulate fire behavior using computational fluid dynamics based methods to numerically solve the three-dimensional, time dependent, model equations that govern, to some approximation, the component physical processes and their interactions…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland fire management: insights from a foresight panel
Year: 2015
Wildland fire management faces unprecedented challenges in the 21st century: the increasingly apparent effects of climate change, more people and structures in the wildland-urban interface, growing costs associated with wildfire management, and the rise of high-impact fires, to name a few. Given these significant and growing challenges, conventional fire management approaches are unlikely to be effective in the future. Innovative and forward-looking approaches are needed. This study explored wildland fire management futures by using methods and diverse perspectives from futures research. To…
Publication Type: Report
Rebuilding and new housing development after wildfire
Year: 2015
The number of wildland-urban interface communities affected by wildfire is increasing, and both wildfire suppression and losses are costly. However, little is known about post-wildfire response by homeowners and communities after buildings are lost. Our goal was to characterise rebuilding and new development after wildfires across the conterminous United States. We analysed all wildfires in the conterminous USA from 2000 to 2005. We mapped 42 724 buildings, of which 34 836 were present before the fire and survived, 3604 were burned, 2403 were post-fire new development, and 1881 were burned…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Potential Impact of Regional Climate Change on Fire Weather in the United States
Year: 2015
Climate change is expected to alter the frequency and severity of atmospheric conditions conducive for wildfires. In this study, we assess potential changes in fire weather conditions for the contiguous United States using the Haines Index (HI), a fire weather index that has been employed operationally to detect atmospheric conditions favorable for large and erratic fire behavior. The index summarizes lower atmosphere stability and dryness into an integer value with higher values indicting more fire-prone conditions. We use simulations produced by the North American Regional Climate Change…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland Fuel Fundamentals and Applications
Year: 2015
A new era in wildland fuel sciences is now evolving in such a way that fire scientists and managers need a comprehensive understanding of fuels ecology and science to fully understand fire effects and behavior on diverse ecosystem and landscape characteristics. This is a reference book on wildland fuel science; a book that describes fuels and their application in land management. There has never been a comprehensive book on wildland fuels; most wildland fuel information was put into wildland fire science and management books as separate chapters and sections. This book is the first to…
Publication Type: Book
Reform forest fire management
Year: 2015
Globally, wildfire size, severity, and frequency have been increasing, as have related fatalities and taxpayer-funded firefighting costs (1). In most accessible forests, wildfire response prioritizes suppression because fires are easier and cheaper to contain when small (2). In the United States, for example, 98% of wildfires are suppressed before reaching 120 ha in size (3). But the 2% of wildfires that escape containment often burn under extreme weather conditions in fuel-loaded forests and account for 97% of fire-fighting costs and total area burned (3). Changing climate and decades of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
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
The 2010 wildland-urban interface of the conterminous United States
Year: 2015
The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area where structures and other human development meet or intermingle with undeveloped wildland, and it is where wildfires have their greatest impacts on people. Hence the WUI is important for wildfire management. This document and associated maps summarize the extent of the WUI in the conterminous United States in 2010. The maps and summary statistics are designed to inform both national policy and local land management concerning the WUI. The data presented here summarize the 2010 WUI at a national scale and for each of the 48 conterminous States.…
Publication Type: Report
A bird’s-eye view: Land-use planning and assessments in Oregon and Washington
Year: 2015
Developing forest lands and agricultural lands for other uses has wide-ranging implications. Land development can affect production from forest and agricultural lands, wildlife habitat quality, the spread of invasive species, water quality, wildfire control, and infrastructure costs. In its attempts to mitigate these effects, Oregon implemented statewide land-use planning laws in the early 1970s. Washington established less prescriptive laws in the 1990s. Policymakers, land managers, and various interest groups want to know the effect these laws have had on land use. Scientists with the…
Publication Type: Report
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
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