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To better understand how research organizations enable and constrain co-production, this study examined seven co-produced wildland fire projects associated with the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service Rocky Mountain Research Station (RMRS), through in-depth interviews with scientists, managers and community members. Results provide insights into how organizational structures and cultures influence the co-production of fire science. Research organizations like RMRS may be able to institutionalize co-production by adjusting the way they incentivize and evaluate researchers, increasing investment in science delivery and scientific personnel overall, and supplying long-term funding to support time-intensive collaborations. These sorts of structural changes could help transform the culture of fire science so that coproduction is valued alongside more conventional scientific activities and products.
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Video recordings from the International Sage-Grouse Forum in Salt Lake City are free, but there is a registration process.
Many inventory and assessment projects spanning large landscapes, the entire Great Basin, or the western US, have been completed recently or are underway for key natural resources. This special session of the 4th Great Basin Consortium Conference brought together leaders of these efforts to compare/contrast their efforts and create a synthesis product or “table of contents” for geospatial data users.
Geospatial presentations in pdf format are provided below:
- Landscape conservation management and analysis portal, Sean Finn USFS, GNLCC
- Rapid ecological assessment of the Northern and Central Basin and Range, Nika Lepak, BLM
- Fire and Invasives Tool, Mike Pellant, BLM
- Land Treatment Digital Library, David Pilliod, USGS
- Conservation Efforts Database, Justin Welty, USGS
- Landscape Toolbox and JournalMap, Bob Unnasch, TNC
- Remote sensing characterization of GB shrub and grasslands for monitoring, Collin Homer
- BLM Riparian Toolbar, Ken McGwire, DRI
- Geospatial weather sources, Stuart Hardegree, ARS
- Development and use of seed zones in native plant restoration, Francis Kilkenny, RMRS
- NorWEST Stream Temperature, Dan Isaak, RMRS
- Forest Inventory and Analysis, Chris Witt, FS
- Assessment, Inventory, and Monitoring Strategy, Nika Lepak, BLM
- Sagebrush ecosystem response to changing climate and disturbance: an ecohydrological perspective, John Bradford, USGS
- Small mammal thermal mapping, Erik Beever, USGS
Here, we ask how mean climate and climate variation at individual sites and across a species’ range affect the specialist-generalist spectrum of germination strategies exhibited by 10 arid land forbs. We investigated these relationships using climate data for the western United States, occurrence records from herbaria, and germination trials with field-collected seeds, and predicted that generalist strategies would be most common in species that experience a high degree of climate variation or occur over a wide range of conditions. We used two metrics to describe variation in germination strategies: (a) selectivity (did seeds require specific cues to germinate?) and (b) population-level variation (did populations differ in their responses to germination cues?) in germination displayed by each species. Species exhibited distinct germination strategies, with some species demonstrating as much among-population variation as we observed among species. Modeling efforts suggested that generalist strategies evolve in response to higher spatial variation in actual evapotranspiration at a local scale and in available water in the spring and annual precipitation at a range-wide scale. Describing the conditions that lead to variation in early life-history traits is important for understanding the evolution of diversity in natural systems, as well as the possible responses of individual species to global climate change.
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On average, for every 50% increase in horse abundance over maximum appropriate management levels, our model predicted an annual decline in sage-grouse abundance by 2.6%. Horse abundance at or below maximum appropriate management levels coincided with sage-grouse λ estimates that were consistent with trends at non-horse areas elsewhere in the study region.
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The Great Basin Bibliography provides access to publication titles and articles relevant to the Great Basin region.
Wildfire is one of the most contentious subjects affecting land managers, land owners, and the public. As a contagious process, the social, political, and ecological ramifications of wildfire response and eventual fire outcomes are not limited to where and when a fire occurs, leaving instead a legacy of effects that can shape the physical and social fabric of a landscape for decades. Fire under the right conditions and in the right locations can restore landscape integrity and help guard against future losses. Fire under the wrong conditions can be catastrophic.
This presentation digs into three years of case studies applying strategic wildfire risk planning, aka “the PODs framework”, to decision support in landscape-scale wildfire planning and during incident-level wildfire response. It discusses successes and failures, challenges of implementation, lessons learned, and current and future applications.
This mobile-friendly, current, and interactive map combines data from the National Digital Forecast Database and RAWS surface weather observations.
Description: Oregon State University’s Forestry & Natural Resources Extension Fire Program and its partners present a webinar series on Wildfire Preparedness and Prevention in Oregon. The last of three webinars focuses on fire adapted communities (FAC) and what it means to be Ready, Set, Go! This webinar is 1.5 hours and the last 30 minutes will include a live demonstration from a Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) member showing us what’s in their go packs!
Presenters:
Alison Green, Oregon: Living with Fire
Jennifer Dietz, International Fire Chiefs Association
Aaron Crawford, CERT member
Dave Busby, Fire Emergency Planning Manager
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Using a sample of 722 large fires from the western United States, we observe whether a fire interacted with a previous fire, the percent area of fires burned by previous fires, and the percent perimeter overlap with previous fires. Fires that interact with previous fires are likely to be larger and have lower total expenditures on average. Conditional on a fire encountering a previous fire, a greater extent of interaction with previous fires is associated with reduced fire size but higher expenditures, although the expenditure effect is small and imprecisely estimated. Subsequent analysis suggests that fires that interact with previous fires may be systematically different from other fires along several dimensions. We do not find evidence that interactions with previous fires reduce suppression expenditures for subsequent fires. Results suggest that previous fires may allow suppression opportunities that otherwise might not exist, possibly reducing fire size but increasing total expenditures.