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On June 1, 2015, the Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Branch of Research. Established in 1915 to centralize and elevate the pursuit of research throughout the agency, the…
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Trend analysis of fire season length and extreme fire weather in North America between 1979 and 2015
We have constructed a fire weather climatology over North America from 1979 to 2015 using the North American Regional Reanalysis dataset and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) System. We tested for the presence of trends in potential fire season…
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Interannual variability in burn severity is assessed across forested ecoregions of the western United States to understand how it is influenced by variations in area burned and climate during 1984–2014. Strong correlations (|r| > 0.6) between…
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Condition of Live Fire-Scarred Ponderosa Pine Twenty-one Years After Removing Partial Cross-Sections
Concern over the effects of removing fire-scarred partial cross-sections may limit sampling of live ponderosa pine to reconstruct fire history. We report mortality rates for ponderosa pine trees 20 to 21 years after removing fire-scarred partial…
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The objectives of this study were to identify whitebark pine fire-climate interactions, and tree establishment and mortality patterns in a landscape context. Specific objectives were to : 1) develop a whitebark pine tree-ring chronology to date fire…
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Wildfire is a key disturbance agent in forests worldwide, but recent large and costly fires have raised urgent questions about how different current fire regimes are from those of the past. Dendroecological reconstructions of historical fire…
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The economic and ecological costs of wildfire in the United States have risen substantially in recent decades. Although climate change has likely enabled a portion of the increase in wildfire activity, the direct role of people in increasing…
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Picture a tranquil landscape with undulating topography, idyllic streams, scenic glades, and verdant vegetation. Left to its own devices, this landscape would eventually become dominated by late successional communities that would slowly shift in…
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Wildfire is a dominant disturbance agent in forest ecosystems, shaping important biogeochemical processes including net carbon (C) balance. Long-term monitoring and chronosequence studies highlight a resilience of biogeochemical properties to large…
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Shifting fire regimes alter forest structure assembly in ponderosa pine forests and may produce structural heterogeneity following stand-replacing fire due, in part, to fine-scale variability in growing environments. We mapped tree regeneration in…
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Human-caused wildfires are controlled by human and natural influences, and determining their key drivers is critical for understanding spatial patterns of wildfire and implementing effective fire management. We examined an array of explanatory…
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In this issue of the GSD Update, we take a look back at selected studies of the Grassland, Shrubland and Desert Ecosystems Science Program (GSD) that depict its strengths and focus areas. Significant results of recent research and science delivery…
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Specific objectives of this review are to address the current status and future outlook of aspen across a range of ecosystems in the US Northern Rockies. Specifically, we aim to answer the following questions:
Is aspen declining in the Northern…
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Soon after its inception in the early 1900s the U.S. Forest Service adopted a policy that can be described as “fire exclusion,” based on the view that forest fires were unnecessary and a menace.1 In the late 1970s, however, the agency was compelled…
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Multidecadal trends in areas burned with high severity shape ecological effects of fires, but most assessments are limited to ,30 years of satellite data. We analysed the proportion of area burned with high severity, the annual area burned with high…
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The effect of topography on wildfire distribution in the Canadian Rockies has been the subject of debate. We suspect the size of the study area, and the assumption fire return intervals are distributed as a Weibull distribution used in many previous…
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Fire is an enormously influential disturbance over large areas of land in the modern world. Vegetation burns because the Earth’s atmosphere contains sufficient oxygen (415%) to support combustion (Pyne, 2001). Oxygen started to accumulate in the…
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We collected field and remotely sensed data spanning 10 years after three 2003 Montana wildfires to monitor ecological change across multiple temporal and spatial scales. Multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis was used to create post-fire maps…
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Multidecadal trends in areas burned with high severity shape ecological effects of fires, but most assessments are limited to ∼30 years of satellite data. We analysed the proportion of area burned with high severity, the annual area burned with high…
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Evaluating a new method for reconstructing forest conditions from General Land Office survey records
Historical forest conditions are often used to inform contemporary management goals because historical forests are considered to be resilient to ecological disturbances. The General Land Office (GLO) surveys of the late 19th and early 20th centuries…
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