This assessment provides input to the reauthorized National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS) and the National Climate Assessment (NCA), and it establishes the scientific foundation needed to manage for drought resilience and adaptation.

Dry Forest landscapes dominated by pine and mixed-conifer forests composed of ponderosa pine and associated coniferous species, such as Douglas-fir and white or grand fir, are extensive in western North America, including the Pacific Northwest (Franklin and Dyrness, 1988).

Wildfire is an annual threat for many rural communities in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. In some severe events, evacuation is one potential course of action to gain safety from an advancing wildfire.

Biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) is a key ecological process that can restore nitrogen (N) lost in wildfire and shape the pace and pattern of post-fire forest recovery. To date, there is limited information on how climate and soil fertility interact to influence different pathways of BNF in early forest succession.

As carbon modeling tools become more comprehensive, spatialdata are needed to improve quantitative maps of carbon emissions from fire.The Wildland Fire Emissions Information System (WFEIS) provides mappedestimates of carbon emissions from historical forest fires in the United Statesthrough a web browser.

Fire-prone landscapes are not well studied as coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) and present many challengesfor understanding and promoting adaptive behaviors and institutions. Here, we explore how heterogeneity, feedbacks, and externaldrivers in this type of natural hazard system can lead to complexity and can limit the development of more adaptive approaches topolicy and management.

An experimental apparatus has been constructed to generate a controlled and repeatable size and mass distribution of glowing firebrands. The present study reports on a series of experiments conducted in order to characterize the performance of this firebrand generator.

Because wildfires don’t stop at ownership boundaries, managers from governmental and nongovernmental organizations in Northern Colorado are taking steps to pro-actively “co-manage” wildfire risk through the Northern Colorado Fireshed Collaborative (NCFC).