Research and Publications
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We examined how destructive wildfire affected progress toward becoming fire adapted in eight locations in the United States. We found that community-level adaptation following destructive fires is most common where destructive wildfire is novel and there is already government capacity and investment in wildfire regulation and land use planning. External funding, staff capacity, and the presence of issue champions combined to bring about change after wildfire. Locations with long histories of destructive wildfire, extensive previous investment in formal wildfire regulation and mitigation, or little government and community capacity to manage wildfire saw fewer changes. Across diverse settings, communities consistently used the most common tools and actions for wildfire mitigation and planning. Nearly all sites reported changes in wildfire suppression, emergency response, and hazard planning documents. Expansion in voluntary education and outreach programs to increase defensible space was also common, occurring in half of our sites, but land use planning and regulations remained largely unchanged. Adaptation at the community and local governmental level therefore may not axiomatically follow from each wildfire incident, nor easily incorporate formal approaches to minimizing land use and development in hazardous environments, but in many sites wildfire was a focusing event that inspired reflection and adaptation.
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Here, we explore the drivers of high-severity fire for forested ecoregions in the western US over the period 2002–2015. We found that live fuel, on average, was the most important factor driving high-severity fire among ecoregions (average relative influence = 53.1%) and was the most important factor in 14 of 19 ecoregions. Fire weather was the second most important factor among ecoregions (average relative influence = 22.9%) and was the most important factor in five ecoregions. Climate (13.7%) and topography (10.3%) were less influential. We also predicted the probability of high-severity fire, were a fire to occur, using recent (2016) satellite imagery to characterize live fuel for a subset of ecoregions in which the model skill was deemed acceptable (n = 13). These ‘wall-to-wall’ gridded ecoregional maps provide relevant and up-to-date information for scientists and managers who are tasked with managing fuel and wildland fire.
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In the Deschutes National Forest, researchers with the USFS Pacific Northwest Research Station, Oregon State University, and Kansas State University conducted a study to compare the effects of low-intensity and high-intensity burns on soil organisms and nutrients. The high-intensity burns were simulated by burning “mega-logs,” a proxy for naturally occurring large downed wood. They established 12 sites and collected pre- and postburn soil samples and continuous temperature recordings during the fire. As expected, the soil on the mega-log sites experienced intense heating. High temperatures penetrated 4 inches below the surface but no farther than 12 inches, and soil carbon and organic matterderived nutrients were volatized. There was also a substantial loss of nearly all the existing microbial communities. Within one week, however, fungi had returned; ascomycete fungi, such as morels, dominated the sites. Ponderosa pine seedlings were colonized by ectomycorrhizal fungi within four months.
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To assess the effects of aerial and drill seeding on plant community trajectories, fuel composition, and fire regimes, this study collected geospatial datasets spanning 209,000 ha of sagebrush steppe on BLM land in southern Idaho. In the field, 68 sites were sampled for fuel and plant community composition in 2014 and 2015 across areas that had burned 1-6 times and had no, aerial, drill, or aerial + drill seeding. The study found that 1) fire and rehabilitation shaped plant communities, 2) drill seeding after multiple fires in dry, low elevation sites prevented conversion to cheatgrass-dominated systems, 3) drill seeded sites had fewer fires and increased in fire frequency more slowly than aerial seeded sites, 4) the on-the-ground conditions that led to the decision to aerially seeding after a fire led to more frequent and numerous fires.
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Using epidemiology studies to understand the exposure-response relationship for PM, this study found that firefighters were at an increased risk for long-term health effects from smoke exposure. The risk for lung cancer mortality increases nearly linearly with exposures over time and is more strongly influenced by exposure duration than are the risks of death from cardiovascular or ischemic heart disease. On the other hand, the risk of cardiovascular mortality rises steeply for doses in the range we estimated for firefighter exposures but flattens out at higher exposures to PM. The data presented in this paper clearly identify the crews and activities most likely to exceed occupational exposure limits and firefighters may have a an increased health risk from smoke exposures.
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Mixed severity wildfires burn large areas in western North America forest ecosystems in most years and this is expected to continue or increase with climate change. Little is understood about vegetation recovery and changing fuel conditions more than a decade post-fire because it exceeds the duration of most studies of fire effects. We measured plant species composition, conifer seedling regeneration, fuel loads, and ground cover at 15 wildfires that burned 9-15 years previous in five western U.S. vegetation types distributed across eight states including Alaska.
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A ranch-level model using state-and-transitions models for three ecological sites is used to determine the trade-offs of providing various ecosystem services. The hypothetical ranch is located in northern Colorado and is based upon area average ecological site characteristics and livestock production practices. Management decisions include stocking rate and brush control. The model includes exogenous factors such as precipitation and fire. The model solves for optimal decisions over an infinite planning horizon using stochastic dynamic programming. Results show that a ranch cannot provide all ecosystem services in tandem at their highest level, implying that land managers must decide which ecosystems service they want to provide. Also, it is much cheaper in terms of foregone profitability for a ranch to continue to provide a specific ecosystem service that is already provided by the ranch rather than try to transition the ranch to a new ecological state in order to provide a service currently not provided.
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Across the breadth of fire science disciplines, women are leaders in fire research and development. This piece acknowledges some of these leaders to promote diversity across our disciplines.
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The Nevada Rangeland Monitoring Handbook has been designed to provide a clear overview of the complex and often confusing world of rangeland monitoring. Included are a suite of short- and long-term monitoring methods.
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This study used seed‐coating techniques to attach powder ground from Bhut Jolokia (C. chinense) peppers to native plant seeds and evaluated the efficacy of these seed coatings for deterring rodent seed predation and enhancing native plant recruitment using laboratory and field experiments. Laboratory feeding trials demonstrated that native deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus) consumed far fewer pepper‐coated seeds compared with untreated control seeds. Field seed‐addition experiments consistently demonstrated that rodent seed predation reduced native plant recruitment over the four year study. Coating techniques used in the first three years were not persistent enough to reduce rodent seed predation effects on plant recruitment. However, a more persistent coating applied in conjunction with late‐winter sowing negated rodent seed predation effects on recruitment in year four. Our results demonstrate that coating seeds with natural plant defense compounds may provide an effective, economical way to improve the efficacy of plant restoration by deterring seed predation by ubiquitous rodent granivores.