Fact Sheet / Brief

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Community conversations: Applying traditional knowledge to fire management

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Challenges and solutions in applying TK and western knowledge (WK) to current approaches of wildland fire, fuels, and natural and cultural resource management.

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Mountain big sagebrush – Fire regimes

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Estimates of historical fire regime parameters in mountain big sagebrush communities can be compared with current fire regimes and trends to establish general guidelines for ecological restoration. A synthesis of information on historical patterns and contemporary changes in fuels and fire regimes in mountain big sagebrush communities is available in the Fire Effects Information System (FEIS). This research brief summarizes information from that FEIS Fire Regime Synthesis.

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Comparing smoke exposure from wildfires and Rx fires

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This study examines the differences in community level exposures to smoke from both wildfire and prescribed fire.

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Natural experiment shows fuel treatment effectiveness

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Strategically placed landscape area fuel treatments in the Sierra Nevada were put to the test in this study when the American Fire burned through previously treated areas. Both fire effects and initial post-fire conifer regeneration were investigated.

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Conifer removal benefits sage-grouse, other birds, and rangeland productivity

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Large-scale encroached conifer removal is an increasingly widespread practice that benefits rangeland productivity and restores habitat quality for sagegrouse and other sagebrush-dependent wildlife. Recent studies show that after encroached conifers are removed, sage-grouse occupancy, nest survival, and brood success are greatly improved. Studies also show that sagebrush songbirds recolonize rapidly following encroached conifer removal.

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Nonnative plants, fuels, and desert revegetation

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To revegetate disturbed desert lands, practitioners often reestablish fertile islands as a first step in restoring native plants and associated fauna on disturbed desert sites. This research brief discusses the pros and cons of this approach considering native and non-native species.

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Restoring resilience at the landscape scale: Lessons learned from the Blue Mountains

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The Pacific Northwest Region of the Forest Service’s “Eastside Restoration Strategy” aimed to improve forest health conditions by accelerating the pace and scale of restoration on national forests in eastern Oregon and Washington. As part of this effort, the Regional Office created a dedicated interdisciplinary Blue Mountains Restoration Strategy Team (ID Team) to conduct landscape-level planning across four national forests and innovate strategies to more effectively reach planning decisions. We conducted interviews with 25 key informants, observed meetings, analyzed documents, and worked with an advisory group to understand transferrable insights from the project.

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Where the WUI is: Implications for wildfire mitigation and outreach communities

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The WUI is often synonymous with fire risk to buildings, but this research suggests that this is not the case in all fire-prone states. While fire outreach was often present near areas where buildings are destroyed by wildfire, many communities are established after major fires.

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Partnering for ecosystem conservation is essential

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Discussions of successes, struggles, and failures with partner-specific tools are vital to the successful implementation of “translational ecology” a formal term for biological conservation partnerships.

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Wildland-urban interface (WUI) growth in the U.S.

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We have been studying the WUI in the U.S. for more than 10 years, looking at where WUI areas were once located, where they are now, and where we expect them to be in the coming decades. Our new data set provides the first high-resolution data on WUI change from 1990 to 2010, revealing how housing growth and wildland vegetation have combined over time. We developed new algorithms that converted the decennial Census standalone data into a consistent dataset on housing growth across the conterminous U.S.

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