Pruning
Pruning is removing the lower branches of trees. Increasing the distance between the ground and the lowest tree branches reduces the likelihood that a fire on the ground will use the branches as a ladder to move into tree crowns.
Pruning is removing the lower branches of trees. Increasing the distance between the ground and the lowest tree branches reduces the likelihood that a fire on the ground will use the branches as a ladder to move into tree crowns.
Prescribed fire is a primary tool used to restore western forests following more than a century of fire exclusion, reducing fire hazard by removing dead and live fuels (small trees and shrubs).
In the prairies of the Pacific Northwest, USA, fire has been reintroduced as a tool for reducing non-native, invasive plant cover and promoting the growth and establishment of native plant communities.
The Interagency Fuels Treatment Decision Support System (IFTDSS) is a web-based software and data integration framework that organizes fire and fuels software applications into a single online application. IFTDSS is designed to make fuels treatment planning and analysis more efficient and effective.
In 1935, Elers Koch argued in a Journal of Forestry article that a minimum fire protection model should be implemented in the backcountry areas of national forests in Idaho, USA. As a USDA Forest Service Supervisor and Assistant Regional Forester, Koch had led many major fire-fighting campaigns in the region, beginning with the great 1910 fires of Idaho and Montana.
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.
It is generally accepted that year-to-year variability in moisture conditions and drought are linked with increased wildfire occurrence. However, quantifying the sensitivity of wildfire to surface moisture state at seasonal lead-times has been challenging due to the absence of a long soil moisture record with the appropriate coverage and spatial resolution for continental-scale analysis.
Each year wildland fires kill and injure trees on millions of forested hectares globally, affecting plant and animal biodiversity, carbon storage, hydrologic processes, and ecosystem services.
Dry forests throughout the United States are fire-dependent ecosystems, and much attention has been given to restoring their ecological function. As such, land managers often are tasked with reintroducing fire via prescribed fire, wildland fire use, and fire-surrogate treatments such as thinning and mastication.
The results of this synthesis illustrate several important lessons. First, current forest structure is the result of decades of fire-suppression activities, and so restoration will require multiple treatments to bring forests to within the range of historic variation.