Fact Sheet / Brief
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Oregon Health Authority and the University of Oregon partnered to conduct a survey-based evaluation of wildfire smoke communications and impacts experienced by Oregon residents during the 2020 wildfire season. The purpose of this survey was to (1) understand how Oregonians respond to wildfire smoke and (2) provide an open-source evaluation tool and data to support wildfire smoke communication practitioners in Oregon.
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Wildfire risk, species conservation, and ecosystem management all depend on seamless spatial data. LANDFIRE may already be supporting your mission if you have ever asked questions like these:
- What is the wildfire risk within a particular landscape?
- Where can I get data to evaluate fauna habitats?
- If ignited, how might a wildfire move through a particular landscape?
- How does the vegetation cover in one area compare with the vegetation in another area?
- How have disturbances in the past affected current forest conditions?
- What is the spatial distribution of a certain vegetation type?
- Where can I find spatial vegetation and structure data for all lands, regardless of ownership?
National LANDFIRE datasets can help answer all these questions for areas of interest within the United States and insular areas at the 30-meter pixel level. LANDFIRE is a Federal program that provides a suite of spatial datasets indicating areas of disturbance, vegetation and fuels distributions and structure, and historical conditions. Although LANDFIRE is the definitive dataset used by the interagency fire community for surface and canopy fuels, the program also maps more than 30 spatial datasets that can be used for a variety of purposes.
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Climate-driven changes in global temperatures and aridity are directly correlated with the decreasing interval between high-elevation fires. Fire activity is increasingly disproportionate at higher elevations than that of lower elevation forests in the Western United States. Studies documented an upslope advance of high-elevation fires of roughly 7.6 m (25 ft) per year. An additional 81,500 km2 (31,500 miles2) of the western United States forested regions were exposed to fires due to increased aridity between 1984 and 2017.
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This paper argues that the expansion of prescribed fire will require new public policies that both protect burn practitioners from liability and compensate for losses from potential fire escapes.
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Study findings revealed that consistent treatment maintenance, the culture of communication about treatments, local expert knowledge, and unit/team composition are important components of how fuel treatments are evaluated and integrated during incident response.
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This “A-Z guide” highlights recent Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS) science and covers methods to make biochar on site, including using piles, kilns, and air curtain burners. It also details three uses for biochar (agricultural, forest restoration, and mine land reclamation), and methods for application, including biochar spreaders.
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This paper argues that the expansion of prescribed fire will require new public policies that both protect burn practitioners from liability and compensate for losses from potential fire escapes.
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The Fireshed Registry is a geospatial dashboard for land managers and decision makers to view and map a vast array of data related to wildfire transmission, past, present, and future management, and past and predicted wildfires. The Registry covers the full continental U.S and includes 192 million hectares of forest land. Fireshed delineations within the tool are not limited by administrative, jurisdictional, or other anthropogenic boundaries.
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This brief provides recommendations for managers thinking about using an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (drone) for post-fire seeding. This project was designed to test the technology, learn about the logistics associated with drone seeding, and share lessons learned to improve drone use in future projects. Partnerships made this project possible.
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Restoration efforts can be negatively impacted by increases in small mammals. These small mammals consume larger seeds of the native plant community, hampering the establishment of new plants and the recovery of existing plants. An approach to overcome this problem is to coat seeds being used for restoration projects with seed predation deterrents. RMRS researchers have identified substances successful in deterring seed predation, including chili powder, neem oil, and activated carbon. In this study, the increased seed recruitment success was enough to offset the cost of coating the seeds.