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Theory suggests that natural fire regimes can result in landscapes that are both self-regulating and resilient to fire. For example, because fires consume fuel, they may create barriers to the spread of future fires, thereby regulating fire size.…
Author(s): Sean A. Parks, Lisa M. Holsinger, Carol Miller, Cara R. Nelson
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Large fires or “megafires” have been a major topic in wildland fire research and management for over a decade. There is great debate regarding the impacts of large fires. Many believe that they (1) are occurring too frequently, (2) are burning…
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Wildland fire management has risen to the forefront of land management and now receives greater social and political attention than ever before. As we progress through the 21st century, these areas of attention are continually presenting challenges…
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Designation of safety zones is a primary duty of all wildland firefighters. Unfortunately, information regarding what constitutes an adequate safety zone is inadequately defined. Measurements of energy release from wildland fires have been used to…
Author(s): Bret W. Butler, Russell A. Parsons, William E. Mell
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Projected warming will have significant impacts on snowfall accumulation and melt, with impli- cations for water availability and management in snow-dominated regions. Changes in snowfall extremes are confounded by projected increases in…
Author(s): A.C. Lute, John T. Abatzoglou, Katherine C. Hegewisch
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A new drought index termed the “soil moisture drought index (SODI)” is developed to characterize droughts. The premise of the index is based on how much water is required to attain soil moisture at field capacity. SODI captures variations of…
Author(s): Mohammad Sohrabi, Jae H. Ryu, John T. Abatzoglou, John Tracy
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Satellite-mapped fire perimeters and the multivariate El Niño–Southern Oscillation index were used to examine the impact of concurrent El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) phase on very large fire (VLF) occurrences over the intermountain northwestern…
Author(s): Renaud Barbero, John T. Abatzoglou, Timothy J. Brown
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Climate change may impact soil health and productivity as a result of accelerated or decelerated rates of erosion. Previous studies suggest a greater risk of wind erosion on arid and semi-arid lands due to loss of biomass under a future warmer…
Author(s): B.S. Sharratt, J. Tatarko, John T. Abatzoglou, F.A. Fox, D. Huggins
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Time-varying fire-climate relationships may represent an important component of fire-regime variability, relevant for understanding the controls of fire and projecting fire activity under global-change scenarios. We used time-varying statistical…
Author(s): Philip E. Higuera, John T. Abatzoglou, Jeremy S. Littell, Penelope Morgan
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The Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity project is a comprehensive fire atlas for the United States that includes perimeters and severity data for all fires greater than a particular size (,400 ha in the western US, and,200 ha in the eastern US).…
Author(s): Crystal A. Kolden, Alistair M. S. Smith, John T. Abatzoglou
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“Megafire” events, in which large high-intensity fires propagate over extended periods, can cause both immense damage to the local environment and catastrophic air quality impacts on cities and towns downwind. Increases in extreme events associated…
Author(s): Narasimhan K. Larkin, John T. Abatzoglou, Donald McKenzie, Brian E. Potter, E. Ashley Steel, Brian J. Stocks
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Software was developed to evaluate National Weather Service (NWS) spot forecasts. Fire management officials request spot forecasts from the NWS to provide detailed guidance as to atmospheric conditions in the vicinity of planned prescribed burns as…
Author(s): John D. Horel, Timothy J. Brown
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In this project, we developed a Forest Vegetation Simulator (FVS, JFSP Project #) post-processor (FVS2FCCS) to convert FVS simulated treelist and surface fuel data into Fuel Characteristics Classification System (FCCS, JFSP Project #98-1-1-06)…
Author(s): Morris C. Johnson, Sarah J. Beukema, Stephanie A. Rebain, Paige C. Eagle, Kjell Swedin, Maria Petrova, Susan J. Prichard
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We exploited the measurement capacity of a terrestrial laser scanner to precisely characterize shrub fuel matrices in a laboratory setting, to abstract fuel elements for fire behavior modeling, and to identify strengths and limitations of TLS for…
Author(s): Carl A. Seielstad, Thomas H. Fletcher, David R. Weise
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Weather forecasts can help identify environmental conditions conducive to prescribed burning or to increased fire danger. These conditions are important components of fire management tools such as fire ignition potential maps, fire danger rating…
Author(s): Miriam L. Rorig, Stacy Drury
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Burn severity as inferred from satellite-derived differenced Normalized Burn Ratio (dNBR) is useful for evaluating fire impacts on ecosystems but the environmental controls on burn severity across large forest fires are both poorly understood and…
Author(s): Donovan Birch, Penelope Morgan, Crystal A. Kolden, John T. Abatzoglou, Gregory K. Dillon, Andrew T. Hudak, Alistair M. S. Smith
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Recent bark beetle outbreaks in western North America have led to concerns regarding changes in fuel profiles and associated changes in fire behavior. Data are lacking for a range of infestation severities and time since outbreak, especially for…
Author(s): E. Matthew Hansen, Morris C. Johnson, Barbara J. Bentz, A. Steven Munson
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Spatially distributed snow depth and snow duration data were collected over two to four snow seasons during water years 2011–2014 in experimental forest plots within the Cedar River Municipal Watershed, 50 km east of Seattle, Washington, USA. These…
Author(s): Susan E. Dickerson-Lange, James A. Lutz, Rolf Gersonde, Kael A. Martin, Jenna E. Forsyth, Jessica D. Lundquist
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High up-front costs and uncertain return on investment make it difficult for land managers to economically justify large-scale fuel treatments, which remove trees and other vegetation to improve conditions for fire control, reduce the likelihood of…
Author(s): Matthew P. Thompson, Nathaniel Anderson
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Attaining fire-adapted human communities has become a key focus of collaborative planning on landscapes across the western United States and elsewhere. The coupling of fire simulation with GIS has expanded the analytical base to support such…
Author(s): Joe H. Scott, Matthew P. Thompson, Julie W. Gilbertson-Day
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