Skip to main content

Search by keywords, then use filters to narrow down results by type, year, topic, or ecosystem.

Displaying 1 - 20 of 90

Fire behavior predictions and forecasts are vital to tactical planning on wildland firefighting incidents. One major source of uncertainty in fire behavior predictions is spatial variation in the wind fields used in the fire models. In most cases…
Author(s): Jason M. Forthofer, Bret W. Butler, Kyle S. Shannon, Mark A. Finney, Larry S. Bradshaw, Richard D. Stratton
Year Published:

The effectiveness of applying landscape level fuel treatments is analysed for four different landscape conditions by using both simulation and optimization. The four landscape conditions in the Bitterroot National Forest, Montana, represent a…
Author(s): Jimmie D. Chew, J. Greg Jones, Christine Stalling, Janet Sullivan, Steve Slack
Year Published:

Two methods for identifying ecological restoration opportunities in the Northern Region of the Forest Service are compared. Different analysis methods are often used to address issues at different planning scales. The first method is a nonspatial…
Author(s): Jimmie D. Chew
Year Published:

Recently there has been discussion in the National Wildland Fire Coordination Group (NWCG) fire danger and fire weather working teams about the impact of observations from different anemometer heights and more importantly, averaging times, on inputs…
Author(s): Larry S. Bradshaw, Eugene Petrescu, Isaac C. Grenfell
Year Published:

In 2000, wildfires burned more than 200,000 acres on the Bitterroot National Forest of Montana and nearly 1.5 million acres in the Northern and Intermountain Regions. These fires increased light and nutrient levels, reduced plant competition, and…
Author(s): Elaine Kennedy Sutherland
Year Published:

Understanding the trade-offs between short-term and long-term consequences of fire impacts on ecosystems is needed before a comprehensive fuels management program can be implemented nationally. We are evaluating 3 potential trade-off models at 8…
Author(s): David R. Weise, Richard A. Kimberlin, Michael J. Arbaugh, Jimmie D. Chew, J. Greg Jones, James Merzenich, Marc R. Wiitala, Robert E. Keane, Mark D. Schaaf, Jan W. van Wagtendonk
Year Published:

The objective of this paper is to provide a general overview of the influence of wildland fires on the erosional processes common to the forested landscapes of the western United States. Wildfire can accelerate erosion rates because vegetation is an…
Author(s): Steven M. Wondzell, John G. King
Year Published:

Fire is an important part of the disturbance regimes of northwestern US forests and its role in maintaining and altering forest vegetation is evident in the paleoecological record of the region. Long-term reconstructions of Holocene fire regimes,…
Author(s): Cathy L. Whitlock, Sarah L. Shafer, Jennifer R. Marlon
Year Published:

Airborne laser altimetry provides an unprecedented view of the forest floor in timber fuel types and is a promising new tool for fuels assessments. It can be used to resolve two fuel models under closed canopies and may be effective for estimating…
Author(s): Carl A. Seielstad, Lloyd P. Queen
Year Published:

Twentieth-century wildfire suppression and land management policies have promoted biomass accumulations in some ecosystems in the western United States where wildfire is a natural and necessary element. These changes have fueled large, stand-…
Author(s): Anthony L. Westerling, Thomas W. Swetnam
Year Published:

Prescribed fires are important for rangeland restoration and affect plant community composition and species interactions. Many rangeland plant communities have been, or are under the threat of noxious weed invasion, however there is little…
Author(s): James S. Jacobs, Roger L. Sheley
Year Published:

How have changes in land management practices affected vegetation patterns in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem? This question led us to develop a deterministic, successional, vegetation model to 'turn back the clock' on a study area and…
Author(s): Alisa L. Gallant, Andrew J. Hansen, John S. Councilman, Duane K. Monte, David W. Betz
Year Published:

The time interval between stand-replacing fires can influence patterns of initial postfire succession if the abundance of postfire propagules varies with prefire stand age. We examined the effect of fire interval on initial postfire lodgepole pine (…
Author(s): Tania L. Schoennagel, Monica G. Turner, William H. Romme
Year Published:

Catchpole et al. (1998) reported rates of spread for 357 heading and no-wind fires burned in the wind tunnel facility of the USDA Forest Service's Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana for the purpose of developing models of wildland…
Author(s): Ralph M. Nelson
Year Published:

Experimental forecasts for the 2003 fire season indicate low area burned in most western deserts and basins, high area burned in the southern Rocky Mountains and at higher elevations in Arizona and New Mexico, and mid to high area burned in the…
Author(s): Anthony L. Westerling, Alexander Gershunov, Daniel R. Cayan
Year Published:

A 21-yr gridded monthly fire-starts and acres-burned dataset from U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and Bureau of Indian Affairs fire reports recreates the seasonality and interannual variability of wildfire in…
Author(s): Anthony L. Westerling, Timothy J. Brown, Alexander Gershunov, Daniel R. Cayan, M. D. Dettinger
Year Published:

ABSTRACT: This paper describes use of BIOPAK to calculate size classes of live fuels for shrubs and herbs. A library of equations to estimate such fuels in the Pacific Northwest and northern Rocky Mountains is presented and used in an example. These…
Author(s): Carl E. Fiedler, Charles E. Keegan, Todd A. Morgan, Christopher W. Woodall
Year Published:

Despite the numerous values of riparian areas and the recognition of fire as a critical natural disturbance, few studies have investigated the behavior, properties, and influence of natural fire in riparian areas of the western USA. Riparian areas…
Author(s): Kathleen A. Dwire, J. Boone Kauffman
Year Published:

We documented immediate and mid-term (5 y) impacts on streams from a large (15,500 ha) wildfire in northwestern Montana. Fire-related impacts were ecosystem-wide, extending from water chemistry to fish. During the initial firestorm, phosphorus and…
Author(s): Craig N. Spencer, Kristin O. Gabel, F. Richard Hauer
Year Published:

Conservation of native fishes and changing patterns in wildfire and fuels are defining challenges for managers of forested landscapes in the western United States. Many species and populations of native fishes have declined in recorded history and…
Author(s): Bruce E. Rieman, Danny C. Lee, Denver P. Burns, Robert E. Gresswell, Michael K. Young, Rick Stowell, John N. Rinne, Phil Howell
Year Published: