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Wildland fuels are a critical factor in fire management because they are the one factor that managers can control. However, fuels have always been defined, described, and quantified in the context of inputs to fire behavior models. Wildland fuel…
Author(s): Robert E. Keane
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Prescribed burning as a fuel treatment seeks to moderate wildfire impacts and decreases the areal extent of wildfires by increasing the effectiveness of fire suppression. Assessment of prescribed burning effectiveness is frequently anecdotal or…
Author(s): Paulo M. Fernandes
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Fuel treatments have become an indispensable tool for managing fire in North American wildland ecosystems. Historical perspective and extant practices provide insights into current theory and areas of future emphasis. Managers have better…
Author(s): Philip N. Omi
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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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Hazardous fuel reduction treatments conducted both through prescribed fire and mechanical means are a critical part of the mitigation of wildland fire risk in the United States. The US Federal Government has spent an average of $500t million each…
Author(s): Eric Mueller, Nick Skowronski, Kenneth L. Clark, Robert L. Kremens, Michael R. Gallagher, Jan C. Thomas, M. El Houssami, Alexander I. Filkov, Bret W. Butler, John L. Hom, William E. Mell, Albert Simeoni
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Severe wildfires create pulses of dead trees that influence future fuel loads, fire behavior, and fire effects as they decay and deposit surface woody fuels. Harvesting fire-killed trees may reduce future surface woody fuels and related fire hazards…
Author(s): David W. Peterson, Erich K. Dodson, Richy J. Harrod
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The appropriate role of large airtankers (LATs) in federal fire suppression in the United States has been the source of much debate and discussion in recent years as the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) has faced impending decisions about how best to…
Author(s): Crystal S. Stonesifer, Matthew P. Thompson, David E. Calkin, Charles W. McHugh
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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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Sagebrush shrubland ecosystems in the Great Basin are prime examples of how altered successional trajectories can create dynamic fuel conditions and, thus, increase uncertainty about fire risk and behavior. Although fire is a natural disturbance in…
Author(s): Douglas J. Shinneman, David S. Pilliod, Robert S. Arkle, Nancy F. Glenn
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Each year wildfires damage homes, businesses, communities, watersheds, and forests on millions of acres across the U.S. However there are effective ways to reduce the impact of wildfire. A new report, Evaluating the Effectiveness of Wildfire…
Author(s): Alexander M. Evans, Sarah Auerbach, Lara Wood Miller, Rachel Wood, Krys Nystrom, Jonathan Loevner, Amanda Aragon, Matthew Piccarello, Eytan Krasilovsky
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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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Prescribed fire activity is complex and poorly understood when evaluated at a national scale. Most often fire complexity is defined by scale, frequency, season, and location in the context of local and state laws and local community acceptance. In…
Author(s): Mark A. Melvin
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The use of fire as a land management tool is well recognized for its ecological benefits in many natural systems.  To continue to use fire while complying with air quality regulations, land managers are often tasked with modeling emissions from fire…
Author(s): Joshua C. Hyde, Eva K. Strand, Andrew T. Hudak, Dale Hamilton
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The lack of independent, quality-assured field data prevents scientists from effectively evaluating and advancing wildland fire models. To rectify this, scientists and technicians convened in the south-eastern United States in 2008, 2011 and 2012 to…
Author(s): Roger D. Ottmar, J. Kevin Hiers, Bret W. Butler, Craig B. Clements, Matthew B. Dickinson, Andrew T. Hudak, Joseph J. O'Brien, Brian E. Potter, Eric Rowell, Tara Strand, Thomas J. Zajkowski
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With increasing public demand for more intensive biomass utilization from forests, the concerns over adverse impacts on productivity by nutrient depletion are increasing. We remeasured the 1974 site of the Forest Residues Utilization Research and…
Author(s): Woongsoon Jang, Christopher R. Keyes, Deborah S. Page-Dumroese
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Accurate information about three-dimensional canopy structure and wildland fuel across the landscape is necessary for fire behaviour modelling system predictions. Remotely sensed data are invaluable for assessing these canopy characteristics over…
Author(s): Birgit Peterson, Kurtis J. Nelson, Carl A. Seielstad, Jason Stoker, William Matt Jolly, Russell A. Parsons
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Fire is widely recognized as a critical ecological and evolutionary driver that needs to be at the forefront of land management actions if conservation targets are to be met. However, the prevailing view is that prescribed fire is riskier than other…
Author(s): Dirac Twidwell, Carissa L. Wonkka, Michael T. Sindelar, John R. Weir
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Keeping It Wild 2 is an interagency strategy to monitor trends in selected attributes of wilderness character based on lessons learned from 15 years of developing and implementing wilderness character monitoring across the National Wilderness…
Author(s): Peter Landres, Chris Barns, Steve Boutcher, Tim Devine, Peter Dratch, Adrienne Lindholm, Linda Merigliano, Nancy Roeper, Emily Simpson
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Several trends have emerged in recent years that affect the management of the National Forest System, particularly in the western U.S. One is the recognition of landscapes departed from a natural range of variation, especially with implications for…
Author(s): Thomas DeMeo, Amy Markus, Bernard Bormann, Jodi Leingang
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