Research and Publications
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This study approach revealed interactive, ecological relationships such as novel soil-surface effects on first year establishment of sagebrush across the burned landscape, and identified ‘‘hot spots’’ for recovery. The approach could be expanded across sites and years to provide the information needed to explain past seeding successes or failures, and in designing treatments at the landscape scale.
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This guide offers an integrated approach to facilitate the successful establishment of native plants and pollinator habitat along roadsides and other areas of disturbance associated with road modifications. It guides readers through a comprehensive process of initiating, planning, implementing, maintaining and monitoring a roadside revegetation project with native plants and pollinator habitat.
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Almost half of the full community costs of wildfire are paid for at the local level, including homeowners, businesses, and government agencies. Many of these costs are due to long-term damages to community and environmental services, such as landscape rehabilitation, lost business and tax revenues, and property and infrastructure repairs. By comparison, our analysis suggests suppression costs comprise around nine percent of total wildfire costs. The remaining costs include short-term expenses, or those costs occurring within the first six months—and long-term damages accruing during many months and years following a wildfire. Communities at risk to wildfires can reduce wildfire impacts and associated costs through land use planning.
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This report is an outstanding complete description of not only the Rothermel model, but also the modifications and addendums that have evolved for supporting the many systems that use the model. This work shows all the equations, discusses their relevance, and illustrates graphically their response to changes in their inherent variables. The variables required for driving the models referred to as inputs, which must be obtained to describe the environment in which the fire is burning, are often misunderstood.
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Irrigation trials were conducted over multiple years for two perennial Eriogonum species, E. umbellatum and E. heracleoides. Averaged over 11 years, seed yield of E. umbellatum was maximized by 209 mm/year of spring precipitation plus irrigation. Averaged over 6 years, seed yield of E. heracleoides was maximized by 126 mm/year of applied water. Both species required relatively small amounts of irrigation to help assure seed yield, and the irrigation needed for E. umbellatum could be adjusted by taking spring precipitation into account.
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This article extends an existing approach by articulating how characteristic patterns of local social context might be used to generate a range of fire adaptation “pathways” that can be applied variably across communities. Each ‘pathway’ would specify a distinct combination of actions, potential policies and incentives that best reflect the social dynamics, ecological stressors, and accepted institutional functions that people in diverse communities are likely to enact. We contend that advancement of the conceptual tools introduced in this article can aid communities in the development of flexible, scenario- based approaches for addressing wildfire adaptation in different situations. Processes outlined in the article also serve as a unifying way to document, test, and advance flexible approaches professionals can use to work with local populations in the co-development of wildfire management strategies.
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The goal of this paper is to go beyond drawing on distinct disciplinary perspectives to develop a holistic view of extreme wildfire event (EWE) as a social-ecological phenomenon. Based on literature review and using a transdisciplinary approach, this paper proposes a definition of EWE as a process and an outcome. Considering the lack of a consistent “scale of gravity” to leverage extreme wildfire events such as in natural hazards (e.g., tornados, hurricanes, and earthquakes) we present a proposal of wildfire classification with seven categories based on measurable fire spread and behavior parameters and suppression difficulty.
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Often missing or underdeveloped in wildland fire research is a clear sense of the link between contemporaneous political possibility and the desired ecological or management outcomes. This study examines the disconnect between desired outcomes and what we call the “politically possible”. Politically possible policy solutions are those that recognize how compromise, stakeholder engagement, and the distribution of costs and benefits combine to structure political acceptability. Better attending to the politically possible in wildland fire-related research can, in turn, inform our understanding of the cause, effect, and the potential solutions to fire management challenges. A lack of awareness and attention to the politically possible can create divisions or barriers to realistic action.
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This study found that climate change accompanied by experimentally increased biomass (i.e., the effects of invasions that increase community biomass or management that increases productivity through fertilization or respite from grazing) increased drought frequency and duration and advanced drought onset. Results suggest that the replacement of perennial temperate semiarid grasslands by shrubs, or increased biomass, can increase ecological drought in both current and future climates.
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This study found that area burned during the 30-year period, number of fires each year, and fire size followed a strong geographic pattern: Northern Intermountain > Southern Intermountain > Southern Rocky Mountain > Central Rocky Mountain. Area burned within piñon and juniper land cover types increased significantly during the 30-year period across the study area overall and for each geographic region, except the Southern Intermountain. Fire rotations were within reported historical ranges for sagebrush ecosystems and decreased over time. Also, fire number or fire size increased for the Southern Rocky Mountain and Southern Intermountain geographic regions. Across the study area, spatio-temporal patterns in fire regimes for piñon and juniper land cover types were similar to those for other land cover types. Careful monitoring of longer term trends in fire activity and the interacting effects of invasive annual grasses, bark beetles, and climate change is needed to access the dynamics of piñon and juniper land cover types and evaluate the efficacy of management treatments in piñon and juniper land cover types.