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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
Year Published:

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
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Kristin H. Braziunas, Rupert Seidl, Werner Rammer, Monica G. Turner
Year Published:

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
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Seth A. Ex, Justin P. Ziegler, Wade T. Tinkham, Chad M. Hoffman
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Melanie K. Vanderhoof, Todd J. Hawbaker
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Sharon M. Hood, Duncan C. Lutes
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Alan A. Ager, Ana M. G. Barros, Haiganoush K. Preisler, Michelle A. Day, Thomas A. Spies, John D. Bailey, John P. Bolte
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Nick Skowronski, Albert Simeoni, Kenneth L. Clark, William E. Mell, Rory Hadden
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Chad M. Hoffman, Michael A. Battaglia, Tony S. Cheng, Yvette Dickinson, Frederick W. Smith
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Jesse K. Kreye, Nolan W. Brewer, Penelope Morgan, J. Morgan Varner, Alistair M. S. Smith, Chad M. Hoffman, Roger D. Ottmar
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Eric Mueller, Nick Skowronski, Albert Simeoni, Kenneth L. Clark, Robert L. Kremens, William E. Mell, Michael R. Gallagher, Jan C. Thomas, Alexander I. Filkov, M. El Houssami, John L. Hom, Bret W. Butler
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Marco A. Contreras, Woodam Chung
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Alan A. Ager, Michelle A. Day, Charles W. McHugh, Karen C. Short, Julie W. Gilbertson-Day, Mark A. Finney, David E. Calkin
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Marco A. Contreras, Russell A. Parsons, Woodam Chung
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Morris C. Johnson, Maureen C. Kennedy, David L. Peterson
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Andrew T. Hudak, Ian Rickert, Penelope Morgan, Eva K. Strand, Sarah A. Lewis, Peter R. Robichaud, Chad M. Hoffman, Zachary A. Holden
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Alan A. Ager, Nicole M. Vaillant, Mark A. Finney
Year Published:

Experiments were conducted wherein wood shavings and Ponderosa pine needles in quiescent air were subjected to a steady radiation heat flux from a planar ceramic burner. The internal temperature of these particles was measured using fine diameter (0…
Author(s): David Frankman, Brent W. Webb, Bret W. Butler, Donald J. Latham
Year Published:

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…
Author(s): Elizabeth D. Reinhardt, Lisa M. Holsinger, Robert E. Keane
Year Published: