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In this paper, we summarize key findings from a special issue of the journal Rangeland Ecology & Management examining socioecological aspects of woodland expansion and management actions to address this threat in sagebrush and prairie ecosystems…
Author(s): Richard F. Miller, David E. Naugle, Jeremy D. Maestas, Christian A. Hagen, Galon Hall
Year Published:

Invasive woody plant expansion is a primary threat driving fragmentation and loss of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) and prairie habitats across the central and western United States. Expansion of native woody plants, including conifer (primarily …
Author(s): Michael J. Falkowski, Jeffrey S. Evans, David E. Naugle, Christian A. Hagen, Scott A. Carleton, Jeremy D. Maestas, Azad Henareh Khalyani, Aaron J. Poznanovic, Andrew J. Lawrence
Year Published:

Prescribed fire is applied widely as a management tool in North America to meet various objectives such as reducing fuel loads and fuel continuity, returning fire to an ecosystem, enhancing wildlife habitats, improving forage, preparing seedbeds,…
Author(s): William M. Block, L. Mike Conner, Paul A. Brewer, Paulette Ford, Jonathan Haufler, Andrea Litt, Ronald E. Masters, Laura R. Mitchell, Jane Park
Year Published:

Fire regimes are ultimately controlled by wildland fuel dynamics over space and time; spatial distributions of fuel influence the size, spread, and intensity of individual fires, while the temporal distribution of fuel deposition influences fire's…
Author(s): Robert E. Keane
Year Published:

Habitat alterations may improve and expand wildlife habitats, and bolster waning wildlife populations. We used global positioning system (GPS) locations to monitor 38 bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis Shaw) that were translocated to the Seminoe…
Author(s): Justin G. Clapp, Jeffrey L. Beck
Year Published:

Live fuel moisture content (LFMC), the ratio of water mass to dry mass contained in live plant material, is an important fuel property for determining fire danger and for modeling fire behavior. Remote sensing estimation of LFMC often relies on an…
Author(s): Yi Qi, Philip E. Dennison, William Matt Jolly, Rachel C. Kropp, Simon C. Brewer
Year Published:

Despite years of accumulating scientific evidence that fire is critical for maintaining the structure and function of grassland ecosystems in the US Great Plains, fire has not been restored as a fundamental grassland process across broad landscapes…
Author(s): Dirac Twidwell, William E. Rogers, Samuel D. Fuhlendorf, Carissa L. Wonkka, David M. Engle, John R. Weir, Urs P. Kreuter, Charles A. Taylor
Year Published:

Wildland fuels are important to fire managers because they can be manipulated to achieve management goals, such as restoring ecosystems, decreasing fire intensity, minimizing plant mortality, and reducing erosion. However, it is difficult to…
Author(s): Robert E. Keane, Kathy L. Gray, Valentina Bacciu, Signe B. Leirfallom
Year Published:

SageSTEP is a comprehensive regional experiment that provides critical information to managers faced with a sagebrush steppe ecosystem that is increasingly at risk from wildfire, invasive plants, and climate change. The experiment provides managers…
Author(s): James D. McIver, Hugh Barrett, Mark W. Brunson, Stephen C. Bunting, Jeanne C. Chambers, Carla M. D'Antonio, Paul S. Doescher, Dale Johnson, Sherm Karl, Steve Knick, Richard F. Miller, Michael L. Pellant, Frederick B. Pierson, David A. Pyke, Kimberly Rollins, Bruce A. Roundy, Eugene Schupp, Robin J. Tausch, David Turner, Michael J. Wisdom
Year Published:

Invasive species and woodland encroachment have caused extensive changes in the fire regimes of sagebrush steppe over the past 150 years. Land managers and resource specialists of the Great Basin are increasingly required to implement vegetation…
Author(s): Andrea Bourne, Stephen C. Bunting
Year Published:

Individual samples of high moisture fuels from the western and southern United States and humidified aspen excelsior were burned over a flat-flame burner at 987° ± 12°C and 10 ± 0.5 mol% O2. Time-dependent mass and temperature profiles of these…
Author(s): Brent M. Pickett, Carl Isackson, Rebecca Wunder, Thomas H. Fletcher, Bret W. Butler, David R. Weise
Year Published:

Remote sensing from space may well become one of the world's most effective, accurate, and efficient ways to assess fire risk and thus manage large landscapes. The technology is evolving quickly, and researchers are busy keeping up. Some major…
Author(s): Rachel Clark
Year Published:

Prescribed fire is increasingly used for fuels management and ecosystem restoration. Managers and fuels specialists of the Great Basin are often required to estimate fuel loadings to predict fire behavior, recommend fuel treatments, or restore an…
Author(s): Andrea Stebleton, Stephen C. Bunting
Year Published:

The ability of prescribed fire to enhance habitat features for Greater Sage-Grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) in Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata wyomingensis) in western North America is poorly understood. We evaluated recovery of…
Author(s): Jeffrey L. Beck, John W. Connelly, Kerry P. Reese
Year Published:

Research to quantify fuel consumption and flammability in shrub-dominated ecosystems has received little attention despite the widespread occurrence of fire-influenced, shrub-dominated landscapes across the arid lands of the western United States.…
Author(s): Clinton S. Wright, Roger D. Ottmar, Sue A. Ferguson, Robert E. Vihnanek
Year Published:

A series of single and stereo photographs displaying a range of natural conditions and fuel loadings in sagebrush with grass and ponderosa pine-juniper types in central Montana. Each group of photos includes inventory data summarizing vegetation…
Author(s): Roger D. Ottmar, Robert E. Vihnanek, Clinton S. Wright
Year Published:

Big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) ecosystems typically experience stand replacing fires during which some or all of the ignited biomass is consumed. Biomass consumption is directly related to the energy released during a fire, and is an important…
Author(s): Clinton S. Wright, Susan J. Prichard
Year Published:

To plan fuel treatments in the context of comprehensive ecosystem management, forest managers must meet multiple-use and environmental objectives, address administrative and budget constraints, and reconcile performance measures from multiple policy…
Author(s): Kevin D. Hyde, J. Greg Jones, Robin P. Silverstein, Keith Stockmann, Dan R. Loeffler
Year Published:

Fuel moisture is one of the major components of fire risk assessment in the western United States. Regional and landscape fuel moisture estimates are currently derived from coarse resolution remotely sensed imagery without ground measurements to…
Author(s): Jennifer L. Rechel, Seth H. Peterson, Dar A. Roberts, Jan W. van Wagtendonk
Year Published:

The primary factor in estimating fire danger is fuel moisture. Fuel moisture varies seasonally and should be measured over an entire fire season using remote sensing technologies and verified using ground measurements. Recent advances in spaceborne…
Author(s): Jennifer L. Rechel, Dar A. Roberts
Year Published: