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Wildland fire is an important natural process in many ecosystems. However, fire exclusion has reduced frequency of fire and area burned in many dry forest types, which may affect vegetation structure and composition, and potential fire behavior. In…
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There is currently insufficient information in the United States about residents' planned evacuation actions during wildfire events, including any intent to remain at or near home during fire events. This is incompatible with growing evidence that…
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Fire has had a profound historical role in shaping dry mixed conifer forests in the western United States. However, the uncertainty and complexity of prescribed fires raises the question "Is fire always the best option for treating fuels?" The…
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Changes in the properties of an ash layer with time may affect the amount of post-fire runoff, particularly by the formation of ash surface crusts. The formation of depositional crusts by ash have been observed at the pore and plot scales, but the…
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Dr. Dick Hutto, professor of Organismal Biology and Ecology at the University of Montana, took participants of the May 2014 Large Wildland Fires Conference to recently burned sites to discuss fire effects. Hutto was enthused and excited about “the…
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Mountain pine beetle (MPB) outbreaks within the previous 10-15 years have affected millions of hectares of lodgepole pine forests in western North America. Concerns about the influence of recent tree mortality on changes in fire behaviour amongst…
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The scientific basis for restoration of fire-excluded western larch/mixed-conifer forests is not as well developed as that for dry fire-frequent forests. We compared the effects of wildfire and restoration (combined thinning and prescribed fire) in…
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While the use of timber harvests is generally accepted as an effective approach to controlling bark beetles during outbreaks, in reality there has been a dearth of monitoring to assess outcomes, and failures are often not reported. Additionally, few…
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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…
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Reference conditions describe attributes of ecosystem structure, composition, and function and are used to inform ecological restoration efforts. Reference condition information on tree spatial patterns that occurred prior to wide-spread fire…
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Determining appropriate actions to create or maintain landscapes resilient to climate change is challenging because of uncertainty associated with potential effects of climate change and their interactions with land management. We used a set of…
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Several mechanical approaches to managing vegetation fuels hold promise when applied to the dry mixed conifer forests in the western United States. These are most useful to treat surface, ladder, and crown fuels. There are a variety of techniques to…
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Recent work has demonstrated that evolutionary processes shape ecological dynamics on relatively short timescales (eco-evolutionary dynamics), but demonstrating these effects at large spatial scales in natural landscapes has proven difficult. We…
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Accurate assessment of changing fire regimes is important, since climatic change and people may be promoting more wildfires. Government wildland fire policies and restoration programmes in dry western US forests are based on the hypothesis that high…
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Understanding how disturbances interact to shape ecosystems is a key challenge in ecology. In forests of western North America, the degree to which recent bark beetle outbreaks and subsequent fires may be linked (e.g., outbreak severity affects fire…
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Western larch is one of the most fire-adapted conifers in western North America. Its historical perpetuation depended upon regular fire disturbances, which creates open stand conditions and mineral seedbeds. A stand of 200- to 500-year-old larch in…
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A goal of fire management in wilderness is to allow fire to play its natural ecological role without intervention. Unfortunately, most unplanned ignitions in wilderness are suppressed, in part because of the risk they might pose to values outside of…
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Climate projections for the next 20-50 years forecast higher temperatures and variable precipitation for many landscapes in the western United States. Climate changes may cause or contribute to threshold shifts, or tipping points, where relatively…
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Mulch treatments often are used to mitigate post-fire increases in runoff and erosion rates but the comparative effectiveness of various mulches is not well established. The ability of mulch treatments to reduce sediment yields from natural rainfall…
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The Western Mountain Initiative (WMI), a consortium of research groups in the Western United States, focuses on understanding and predicting responses-especially sensitivities, thresholds, resistance, and resilience-of mountain ecosystems to…
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