Research and Publications

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Prescribed fire liability in California

This brief aims to clarify basic liability laws in California, using state law and case examples to further the collective understanding and comfort around prescribed fire liability.

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Strategies for increasing prescribed fire application on federal lands: Lessons from case studies in western US

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In this second phase of the research, we conducted in-depth case studies of federal land management units that were actively working to increase their application of prescribed fire. We selected four case studies based on interviewee recommendations from our first round of interviews. These cases were: the San Juan National Forest (Colorado), the BLM Socorro Field Office/Cibola National Forest (New Mexico), the Sierra National Forest (California), and the Rogue-River Siskiyou National Forest (Oregon), with a focus on the Ashland Forest Resiliency Project in the Siskiyou Mountains Ranger District. For each case study, we conducted between 11 and 17 interviews with Forest Service or BLM staff members and key external partners. In total, 53 interviews were conducted with 62 interviewees for this phase of the project. Interviews focused on the nature of the prescribed fire program on the unit, key partners, primary challenges, and strategies and opportunities for increasing use of prescribed fire.

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Weed-suppressive bacteria studies provide little evidence of effectiveness

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Collectively, these studies show that the Weed-Suppressive Bacteria P. flourescens — strains ACK55, D7, and MB906 — are not likely to be effective in controlling invasive exotic grasses in western U.S. rangelands. There were no negative effects to exotic annual grasses, perennial bunchgrasses, or total community cover within three or four years of treatment when WSB was applied in the field alone or in combination with herbicides. It is possible that new formulations or application techniques could lead to more consistent, desired effects; however the studies described above tested three strains across a wide range of conditions, and yet no consistent effects were observed.

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SageSTEP news: Issue 36 – Tree removal and grass response & Fuel treatments and fire behavior

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Two of the principal functional groups of the understory vegetation (grasses and forbs) respond positively to tree removal by any means, with grasses—both annual and perennial—showing the greatest increases to both burning and cutting over the ten-year time period. This was an expected result, because it was assumed that understory species were significantly suppressed prior to treatment by pinyon and juniper trees on the landscape as a result of competition for resources, principally water (but possibly also light). If the hypothesis of competition for water were true, then we would expect to also see an increase in water resources in the soil after trees were removed, mirroring the response in the understory vegetation.

Prescribed fire and mow treatments maintained fire behavior below this threshold for extreme fire behavior, and in early years even kept it within the 4 ft control mark. Control and tebuthiuron treatments can be expected to have fire behavior that is more difficult to control.

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Use of numerical weather prediction (NWP) models to identify convective outflows for fire weather forecasting

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Numerical weather prediction (NWP) models can produce high-resolution forecasts of gust front conditions, and identifying these conditions from the model outputs may provide enhanced fire weather guidance. Abrupt changes in wind direction and speed can dramatically impact wildfire development and spread. Most importantly, such changes can pose significant problems to firefighting efforts and have resulted in a number of fire fatalities over the years. Frequent causes of such wind shifts are thunderstorm and convective system outflows, known as gust fronts, and the identification and prediction of these present critical challenges for fire weather forecasters. Anticipating and warning of these phenomena in wildland fire situations thus represent opportunities for enhancing the safety of incident personnel and the effectiveness of the firefighting operations. With these considerations we have developed a software tool to identify and depict convective outflow boundaries in high-resolution numerical weather prediction (NWP) models to provide guidance for fire weather forecasting.

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Long-term persistence of aspen in snowdrift-dependent ecosystems

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This study evaluated the potential for climate change and drought to reduce or eliminate isolated aspen communities in southwestern Idaho. We used a landscape simulation model integrated with inputs from an empirically derived biogeochemical model of growth, and a species distribution model of regeneration to forecast how changes in climate, declining snowpack, and competition with a conifer species is likely to affect aspen occupancy over the next 85-years. We found that simulated reductions in snowpack depth (and associated increases in climatic water deficit) caused a reduction in aspen persistence; aspen occupancy was reduced under all high emissions climate scenarios. Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) occupancy also declined under all future climates. Aspen regeneration declined over the course of all simulations, with an ensemble ratio of mortality/establishment increasing over the course of both low and high emissions climate scenarios. Climate-induced mortality of aspen clones increased in frequency under all climate scenarios and, under the most severe emissions scenarios, contributed to a substantial decline of aspen cover. Our research suggests that snowbanks will become an important determinant of long-term persistence of aspen under changing climate in the region.

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Quantifying pinyon-juniper reduction within North America’s sagebrush ecosystem

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This study applied a remote sensing change detection approach to map reductions in pinyon-juniper cover across the sage-grouse range and developed a method for rapidly updating maps of canopy cover. We found total conifer reduction over the past several years (2011−2013 to 2015−2017) amounted to 1.6% of the area supporting tree cover within our study area, which is likely just keeping pace with estimates of expansion. Two-thirds of conifer reduction was attributed to active management (1.04% of the treed area) while wildfire accounted for one-third of all estimated conifer reduction in the region (0.56% of the treed area). Results also illustrate the breadth of this management effort—crossing ownership, agency, and state boundaries.

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Monitoring pinyon-juniper cover and aboveground biomass across the Great Basin

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Since the mid-1800s pinyon-juniper (PJ) woodlands have been encroaching into sagebrush-steppe shrublands and grasslands such that they now comprise 40% of the total forest and woodland area of the Intermountain West of the United States. More recently, PJ ecosystems in select areas have experienced dramatic reductions in area and biomass due to extreme drought, wildfire, and management. Due to the vast area of PJ ecosystems, tracking these changes in woodland tree cover is essential for understanding their consequences for carbon accounting efforts, as well as ecosystem structure and functioning. Here we present a carbon monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) system for characterizing total aboveground biomass stocks and flux of PJ ecosystems across the Great Basin.

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Seeds of Success: A conservation and restoration investment in the future of US lands

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Seeds of Success (SOS) is a national seed collection program led by the Bureau of Land Management. SOS represents the most comprehensive native seed repository in the United States, supporting native plant restoration, management, and research. Since inception in 2000, SOS has collected seeds from over 24,400 native plant populations from ~5,600 taxa from 43 states. Collections include species important to wildlife, pollinators, and indigenous people, and over 10,000 collections have been shared for restoration and research use. We asked how many SOS sites have burned since collection, and identified 662 fires at 631 sites. If fire continues at the pace observed since 2011, an estimated 14% of collection sites will burn by 2050 and over 24% by 2080, putting genetic diversity at risk in areas where fire is linked with invasion. Analysis of 14 native forb species from the western United States found that many collections were from the warmest and driest portions of their range, areas at the highest risk of wildfire, subsequent invasion, and local extinction. SOS provides an opportunity to understand change in natural populations, and represents a critical repository of native plant genetic resources for conservation and future use.

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Not all fuel-reduction treatments degrade biocrusts: Herbicides cause mostly neutral to positive effects on cover of biocrusts

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This study looked at sites with high cover of biocrusts prior to treatments, it demonstrates positive effects of the herbicide, tebuthiuron on lichens with an increase in cover of 10% and trending towards slightly negative effects on moss cover. Across plots, imazapic trended towards a decrease in lichen and moss cover without being statistically significant. Mowing and prescribed fire reduced cover of mosses, with the latter leading to greater declines across sites (declines of 18% vs. 32%). Reductions in moss cover mirrored gains in cover of bare soil, which is associated with increased risk of invasion by grasses responsible for increasing fire risk. The study demonstrates that the use of herbicides simultaneously reduces fuels and maintains greater cover of lichens and mosses compared with other fuel‐reduction treatments, possibly reducing risk of invasion by annual grasses that are responsible for increasing fire risk.

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