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Background: Maximizing the effectiveness of fuel treatments at landscape scales is a key research and management need given the inability to treat all areas at risk from wildfire. We synthesized information from case studies that documented the…
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Background: Adverse effects of wildfires can be mitigated within fuel treatments, but empirical evidence of their effectiveness across large areas is needed to guide design and implementation at the landscape level. We conducted a systematic…
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Context: Fire in forested wildland urban interface (WUI) landscapes is increasing throughout the western United States. Spatial patterns of fuels treatments affect fire behavior, but it is unclear how fire risk and fuel treatment effectiveness will…
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Large wildfires (>50,000 ha) are becoming increasingly common in semi‐arid landscapes of the western United States. Although fuel reduction treatments are used to mitigate potential wildfire effects, they can be overwhelmed in wind‐driven…
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Research Highlights: The impact of variation in fuels and fuel dynamics among forest cover types on the outcome of fuel treatments is poorly understood. This study investigated the potential effects of treatment placement with respect to cover type…
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Landsat Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is commonly used to monitor post-fire green-up; however, most studies do not distinguish new growth of conifer from deciduous or herbaceous species, despite potential consequences for local…
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Wildland fire suppression practices in the western United States are being widely scrutinized by policymakers and scientists as costs escalate and large fires increasingly affect social and ecological values. One potential solution is to change…
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Accurate prediction of fire-caused tree mortality is critical for making sound land management decisions such as developing burning prescriptions and post-fire management guidelines. To improve efforts to predict post-fire tree mortality, we…
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The effectiveness of a hazardous fuel reduction treatment must take into account both the physical change on fuel loading and structure and the effect that this change may have on wildland fire behavior. We first took a remote sensing and field…
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In response to increasing wildfire severity and extent across the dry forests of the western United States in the last several decades, federal policy initiatives have encouraged joint vegetation management and fuels treatments to restore ecosystem…
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Fuel treatments represent a significant component of the wildfire mitigation strategy in the United States. However, the lack of research aimed at quantifying the explicit effectiveness of fuel treatments in reducing wildfire intensity and spread…
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Mastication is an increasingly common fuels treatment that redistributes 'ladder' fuels to the forest floor to reduce vertical fuel continuity, crown fire potential, and fireline intensity, but fuel models do not exist for predicting fire…
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Substantial investments in fuel management activities on national forests in the western US are part of a national strategy to reduce human and ecological losses from catastrophic wildfire and create fire resilient landscapes. Prioritizing these…
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Thinning is a common silvicultural treatment being widely used to restore different types of overstocked forest stands in western U.S. because of its effect on changing fire behavior. Typically, thinning is applied at the stand level using…
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Land managers have been using fire behavior and simulation models to assist in several fire management tasks. These widely-used models use average attributes to make stand-level predictions without considering spatial variability of fuels within a…
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This report provides managers with the current state of knowledge regarding the effectiveness of fuel treatments for mitigating severe wildfire effects. A literature review examines the effectiveness of fuel treatments that had been previously…
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We used the Fire and Fuels Extension to the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FFE-FVS) to simulate fuel treatment effects on 45,162 stands in low- to midelevation dry forests (e.g., ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex. P. & C. Laws.) and…
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Removal of dead and live biomass from forested stands affects subsequent fuel dynamics and fire potential. The amount of material left onsite after biomass removal operations can influence the intensity and severity of subsequent unplanned wildfires…
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This report was designed to meet three broad goals: (1) evaluate wildfire hazard on Federal lands; (2) develop information useful in prioritizing where fuels treatments and mitigation measures might be proposed to address significant fire hazard and…
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We simulated fuel reduction treatments on a 16,000 ha study area in Oregon, US, to examine tradeoffs between placing fuel treatments near residential structures within an urban interface, versus treating stands in the adjacent wildlands to meet…
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