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Scientists have spent decades trying to understand how to best promote resilient forests and reduce fuels. A golden endeavor certainly. Is the best approach using a series of prescribed burns? Or is it mechanically cutting trees? Or does the…
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Increased understanding of how mechanical thinning, prescribed burning, and wildfire affect subsequent wildfire severity is urgently needed as people and forests face a growing wildfire crisis. In response, we reviewed scientific literature for the…
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Linear fuel breaks are being implemented to moderate fire behavior and improve wildfire containment in semiarid landscapes such as the sagebrush steppe of North America, where extensive losses in perennial vegetation and ecosystem…
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Background: Sagebrush ecosystems are experiencing increases in wildfire extent and severity. Most research on vegetation treatments that reduce fuels and fire risk has been short term (2–3 years) and focused on ecological responses. We review…
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Background: Accurate estimates of available live crown fuel loads are critical for understanding potential wildland fire behavior. Existing crown fire behavior models assume that available crown fuels are limited to all tree foliage and half of the…
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We find that wildfire are part of a distinct temporal pattern of soil moisture, vegetation water content and atmospheric dryness dynamics that begin about 5 months before the incidents. We analyze anomalies in soil moisture, vegetation water…
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Background: Climate change is a strong contributing factor in the lengthening and intensification of wildfire seasons, with warmer and often drier conditions associated with increasingly severe impacts. Land managers are faced with challenging…
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Wildfire is a major proximate cause of historical and ongoing losses of intact big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) plant communities and declines in sagebrush obligate wildlife species. In recent decades, fire return intervals have…
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Fuel treatments are commonly applied to increase resilience to wildfire in dry and historically frequent-fire forests of western North America. The long-term effects of fuel treatments on forest structure, fuel profiles (amount and configuration of…
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Wildland fire is a major global driver in the exchange of aerosols between terrestrial environments and the atmosphere. This exchange is commonly quantified using emission factors or the mass of a pollutant emitted per mass of fuel burned. However,…
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Piñon–juniper (PJ) woodlands are a dominant community type across the Intermountain West, comprising over a million acres and experiencing critical effects from increasing wildfire. Large PJ mortality and regeneration failure after catastrophic…
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Background
The record number of wildfires in the United States in recent years has led to an increased focus on developing tools to accurately forecast their impacts at high spatial and temporal resolutions.
Aims
The Warn-on-Forecast System for…
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Trees use nonstructural carbohydrates (NSCs) to support many functions, including recovery from disturbances. However, NSC’s importance for recovery following fire and whether NSC depletion contributes to post-fire delayed mortality are largely…
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Quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides Michx.) stands throughout the western United States provide valuable ecosystem services but can be lost via succession from aspen to conifer. Forest managers are cutting conifers, but disposal of cut wood can be…
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Background: The capacity of forest fuel treatments to moderate the behavior and severity of subsequent wildfires depends on weather and fuel conditions at the time of burning. However, in-depth evaluations of how treatments perform are limited…
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Fuel types misrepresent forest structure and composition in interior British Columbia: a way forward
Background: A clear understanding of the connectivity, structure, and composition of wildland fuels is essential for effective wildfire management. However, fuel typing and mapping are challenging owing to a broad diversity of fuel conditions and…
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Fuel and restoration treatments seeking to mitigate the likelihood of uncharacteristic high-severity wildfires in forests with historically frequent, low-severity fire regimes are increasingly common, but long-term treatment effects on fuels,…
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Prescribed fire is a critical tool for building resilience to changing fire regimes. Policymakers can accelerate the development of effective, adaptation-oriented fire governance by learning from other jurisdictions.
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We analyse…
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Fifty years after its initial publication, Rothermel’s model continues to underpin many operational fire modelling tools. Past authors have, however, suggested a possible oversensitivity of the Rothermel model to fuel depth in certain…
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Wildland fire incident commanders make wildfire response decisions within an increasingly complex socio-environmental context. Threats to human safety and property, along with public pressures and agency cultures, often lead commanders to emphasize…
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