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Background: The capacity of forest fuel treatments to moderate the behavior and severity of subsequent wildfires depends on weather and fuel conditions at the time of burning. However, in-depth evaluations of how treatments perform are limited…
Author(s): Emily G. Brodie, Eric E. Knapp, Wesley R. Brooks, Stacy Drury, Martin W. Ritchie
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Fuel and restoration treatments seeking to mitigate the likelihood of uncharacteristic high-severity wildfires in forests with historically frequent, low-severity fire regimes are increasingly common, but long-term treatment effects on fuels,…
Author(s): Sharon M. Hood, Justin S. Crotteau, Cory Cleveland
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Appropriately designed fuel treatments reduce negative outcomes of wildfire and in some cases promote beneficial wildfire outcomes. Wildfires are a landscape scale phenomenon; therefore, fuel treatments should be evaluated at a landscape level to…
Year Published:

By all measures, wildfires in the western United States are becoming more extreme. Fires are growing larger and burning more intensely, and suppression costs are spiraling upward. Maximizing the effectiveness of fuel treatments at the landscape…
Author(s): Theresa B. Jain, Sharon M. Hood, Shawn T. McKinney, Jeffrey Ott, Alexandra K. Urza, J. Morgan Varner, Ilana L. Abrahamson, Nathaniel Anderson, Michael A. Battaglia, Jeanne C. Chambers, Brice B. Hanberry, Francis F. Kilkenny, Joseph J. O'Brien
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Background Native pinyon (Pinus spp.) and juniper (Juniperus spp.) trees are expanding into shrubland communities across the Western United States. These trees often outcompete with native sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) associated species, resulting in…
Author(s): Claire Williams, Lisa M. Ellsworth, Eva K. Strand, Matthew C. Reeves, Scott E. Shaff, Karen C. Short, Jeanne C. Chambers, Beth A. Newingham, Claire Tortorelli
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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…
Author(s): Alexandra K. Urza, Brice B. Hanberry, Theresa B. Jain
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This review synthesizes the scientific literature on fuel treatment economics published since 2013 with a focus on its implications for land managers and policy makers. We review the literature on whether fuel treatments are financially viable for…
Author(s): Molly E. Hunter, Michael H. Taylor
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Background Advances in fire modeling help quantify and map various components and characterizations of wildfire risk and furthermore help evaluate the ability of fuel treatments to mitigate risk. However, a need remains for guidance in designing…
Author(s): Matthew P. Thompson, Kevin C. Vogler, Joe H. Scott, Carol Miller
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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…
Author(s): Shawn T. McKinney, Ilana L. Abrahamson, Theresa B. Jain, Nathaniel Anderson
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Restoration goals in fire-prone conifer forests include mitigating fire hazard while restoring forest structural components linked to disturbance resilience and ecological function. Restoration of overstory spatial pattern in forests often falls…
Author(s): Jeffery B. Cannon, Katarina J. Warnick, Spencer Elliott, Jennifer S. Briggs
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Maximizing the effectiveness of fuel treatments at the landscape scale is a key research and management need given the inability to treat all areas at risk from wildfire, and there is a growing body of scientific literature assessing this need. We…
Author(s): Theresa B. Jain, Ilana L. Abrahamson, Nathaniel Anderson, Sharon M. Hood, Brice B. Hanberry, Francis F. Kilkenny, Shawn T. McKinney, Jeffrey E. Ott, Alexandra K. Urza, Jeanne C. Chambers, Michael A. Battaglia, J. Morgan Varner, Joseph O’Brien
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Fuel reduction projects are designed to reduce wildfire hazard, but goals can also include ecological restoration, wildlife habitat enhancement, and forest health improvement. In the U.S. northern Rocky Mountains, ponderosa pine/Douglas-fir forests…
Author(s): Sharon M. Hood, Duncan C. Lutes, Christopher R. Keyes, Anna Sala
Year Published:

Determining whether forest landscapes can maintain their resilience to fire – that is, their ability to rebound and sustain – given rapid climate change and increasing fire activity is a pressing challenge throughout the American West. Many western…
Author(s): Monica G. Turner
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Harold Biswell first learned about the benefits of prescribed fire in forest management when he was a Forest Service researcher in Georgia, USA. After he accepted a professorship in the School of Forestry at the University of California, Berkeley,…
Author(s): Scott L. Stephens, Jan W. van Wagtendonk, James K. Agee, Ronald H. Wakimoto
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Climate change is causing increased wildfire activity across the western US and creating post-fire conditions that are warmer and drier than they were in the past. Scientists and managers are concerned with the potential for post-fire tree…
Author(s): Kimberley T. Davis, Lacey Hankin
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Accumulating data indicate the importance of fire in rangeland systems. Mowing is a common management technique sometimes considered a surrogate for fire. However, direct comparisons of fire and mowing effects are limited. Our objective was to…
Author(s): Lance T. Vermeire, Dustin J. Strong, Emily A. Gates, Clayton B. Marlow, Richard C. Waterman
Year Published:

After a more than a century of fighting to keep fire out of forests, reintroducing it is now an important management goal. Yet changes over the past century have left prescribed burning with a big job to do. Development, wildfire suppression, rising…
Author(s): Sylvia Kantor, Becky K. Kerns, Michelle A. Day
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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…
Author(s): Susan J. Prichard, Nicholas A. Povak, Maureen C. Kennedy, David W. Peterson
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In the western United States, restoration of forests with historically frequent, low‐severity fire regimes often includes fuel reduction that reestablish open, early‐seral conditions while reducing fuel continuity and loading. Between 2001 and 2016…
Author(s): Justin S. Crotteau, Christopher R. Keyes, Sharon M. Hood, Andrew J. Larson
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One goal of fuels treatments is to limit potential fire behavior by reducing overstory tree density, but this may precipitate regeneration, which contributes to increasing potential fire behavior over time. To understand factors that influence tree…
Author(s): Kathleen Fialko, Seth A. Ex, Brett Wolk
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