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Ecosystem

Displaying 2641 - 2660 of 6051 results

Social science offers rich descriptions of relationships between wildland-urban interface residents and wildfire, but syntheses across different contexts might gloss over important differences. We investigate the potential extent of such differences…
Author(s): James R. Meldrum, Hannah Brenkert-Smith, Patricia A. Champ, Lilia C. Falk, Pamela Wilson, Christopher M. Barth
Year Published:

Historically, the ponderosa and dry mixed-conifer forests of the Colorado Front Range were more open and grassy, and trees of all size classes were found in a grouped arrangement with sizable openings between the clumps. As a legacy of fire…
Author(s): Susan Miller, Rob Addington, Gregory H. Aplet, Michael A. Battaglia, Anthony S. Cheng, Jonas A. Feinstein, Jeffrey L. Underhill
Year Published:

With drought across much of the southern and western States, it’s shaping up to be another record year for wildfires. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, May 2018 was the fourthworst May since 2000 in terms of U.S.…
Author(s): Sean A. Parks
Year Published:

Faster than real-time wildland fire simulators are being increasingly adopted by land managers to provide decision support for tactical wildfire management and assist with strategic risk planning. These simulators are typically based on simple…
Author(s): Thomas J. Duff, Jane G. Cawson, Brett Cirulis, Petter Nyman, Gary J. Sheridan, Kevin G. Tolhurst
Year Published:

Throughout much of the 20th century, the heights of young quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) in Yellowstone National Park’s northern ungulate winter range were suppressed due to intensive herbivory by Rocky Mountain elk (Cervus elaphus). However,…
Author(s): Robert L. Beschta, Luke E. Painter, William J. Ripple
Year Published:

Wildfire increases the likelihood of runoff, erosion, and downstream sedimentation in many of the watersheds that supply water for Colorado’s Front Range communities. The objectives of this study were to: (1) identify rainfall intensity thresholds…
Author(s): Codie Wilson, Stephanie Kampf, Joseph W. Wagenbrenner, Lee H. MacDonald
Year Published:

Foliar live fuel moisture (LFM)-the weight of water in living plant foliage expressed as a percentage of dry weight-typically affects fire behavior in live wildland fuels. In juniper communities, juniper LFM is important for planning prescribed…
Author(s): W. Matt McCaw, Devin M. Grobert, S. Bruce Brown, Sam Strickland, Guy A. Thompson, Glen Gillman, Lucien M. Ball, Christopher D. Robinson
Year Published:

Abrupt ecological changes occur rapidly relative to typical rates of ecosystem change and are increasingly observed in ecosystems worldwide, thereby challenging adaptive capacities. Abrupt ecological changes can arise from many processes, only some…
Author(s): Zak Ratjczak, S. R. Carpenter, A. R. Ives, Chris J. Kucharik, T. Ramiadantsoa, A. M. Stegner, J. Williams, J. Zhang, Monica G. Turner
Year Published:

Wildfires are a major source of air pollutants in the United States. Wildfire smoke can trigger severe pollution episodes with substantial impacts on public health. In addition to acute episodes, wildfires can have a marginal effect on air quality…
Author(s): Shawn P. Urbanski, Matthew C. Reeves, Rachel E. Corley, Robin P. Silverstein, Wei Min Hao
Year Published:

Wildland fire is a critical process in forests of the western United States (US). Variation in fire behavior, which is heavily influenced by fuel loading, terrain, weather, and vegetation type, leads to heterogeneity in fire severity across…
Author(s): Sean A. Parks, Lisa M. Holsinger, Matthew Panunto, William Matt Jolly, Solomon Z. Dobrowski, Gregory K. Dillon
Year Published:

Following wildfire, mountainous areas of the western United States are susceptible to debris flow during intense rainfall. Convective storms that can generate debris flows in recently burned areas may occur during or immediately after the wildfire,…
Author(s): Dennis M. Staley, Anne Tillery, Jason W. Kean, Luke A. McGuire, Hannah E. Pauling, Francis K. Rengers, Joel B. Smith
Year Published:

Current assessments of the ecological impacts of fires, termed burn severity, investigate the degree to which an ecosystem has changed due to a fire and typically encompass both vegetation and soil effects. Burn severity assessments at local to…
Author(s): Crystal A. Kolden, Aaron M. Sparks
Year Published:

Droughts and insect outbreaks are primary disturbance processes linking climate change to tree mortality in western North America. Refugia from these disturbances—locations where impacts are less severe relative to the surrounding landscape—may be…
Author(s): Jennifer Cartwright
Year Published:

Remote sensing products provide a vital understanding of wildfire effects across a landscape, but detection and delineation of low- and mixed-severity fire remain difficult. Although data provided by the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS)…
Author(s): T. Ryan McCarley, Alistair M. S. Smith, Crystal A. Kolden, Jason Kreitler
Year Published:

Many forested mountain watersheds worldwide evolved with frequent fire, which Twentieth Century fire suppression activities eliminated, resulting in unnaturally dense forests with high water demand. Restoration of pre-suppression forest composition…
Author(s): Gabrielle Boisrame, Sally Thompson, Scott L. Stephens
Year Published:

Western United States wildfire increases have been generally attributed to warming temperatures, either through effects on winter snowpack or summer evaporation. However, near-surface air temperature and evaporative demand are strongly influenced by…
Author(s): Zachary A. Holden, Alan Swanson, Charles H. Luce, William Matt Jolly, Marco Maneta, Jared W. Oyler, Dyer A. Warren, Russell A. Parsons, David L.R. Affleck
Year Published:

Persistent fire refugia, which are forest stands that have survived multiple fires, play an important ecological role in the resilience of mountainous forest ecosystems following disturbances. The loss of numerous refugia patches to large, high-…
Author(s): Marie-Pierre Rogeau, Quinn E. Barber, Marc-Andre Parisien
Year Published:

Detection of tree spatial patterns and structural attributes in a forest stand can provide critical information on occurring dynamics, and steer management decisions. However, since tree spatial distribution depends on factors that operate at…
Author(s): Marco Carrer, Daniele Castagneri, Ionel Popa, Mario Pividori, Emanuele Lingua
Year Published:

This paper deals with the modelling of living fuel ignition, suggesting that an accurate description using a multiphase formulation requires consideration of a thermal disequilibrium within the vegetation particle, between the solid (wood) and the…
Author(s): A. Lamorlette, M. El Houssami, D. Morvan
Year Published:

Interactions between fire and nonnative, annual plant species (that is, “the grass/fire cycle”) represent one of the greatest threats to sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems and associated wildlife, including the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus…
Author(s): Douglas J. Shinneman, Cameron L. Aldridge, Peter S. Coates, Matthew J. Germino, David S. Pilliod, Nicole M. Vaillant
Year Published: