Fire Ecology & Effects
Access BehavePlus v6 Beta.
Behave Plus is a Windows-based computer program that can be used for any fire management application that involves modeling fire behavior and fire effects. The system is composed of a collection of mathematical models that describe fire behavior, fire effects, and the fire environment. The program simulates rate of fire spread, spotting distance, scorch height, tree mortality, fuel moisture, wind adjustment factor, and many other fire behaviors and effects; so it is commonly used to predict fire behavior in several situations.
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This study found that insects generally reduced the severity of subsequent wildfires. Specific effects varied with insect type and timing, but both insects decreased the abundance of live vegetation susceptible to wildfire at multiple time lags. By dampening subsequent burn severity, native insects could buffer rather than exacerbate fire regime changes expected due to land use and climate change. In light of these findings, the researchers recommend a precautionary approach when designing and implementing forest management policies intended to reduce wildfire hazard and increase resilience to global change.
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This short synthesis highlights findings of the national Fire and Fire Surrogates Study, which conducted an integrated network of experiments at 13 sites across the United States, many of which took place on National Forest lands. Results suggest that more species increased in number than decreased. For example, researchers reported that populations of western bluebirds (Sialia mexicana) increased following prescribed fire; whereas mountain chickadees (Poecile gambeli) decreased in response to thinning treatments. The positive and negative responses of deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus), gray-collared chipmunks (Tamias cinereicollis) and least chipmunks (T. minimus) varied among the sites; but the overall biomass of small mammals increased in response to the fire treatments. Researchers also found that small mammals’ responses were related to fire uniformity: the more heterogeneous the post-fire landscape, the greater the proportion of positive responses.
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In this study, researchers concluded that variability in tree regeneration after disturbance can dampen and delay future disturbance by breaking spatiotemporal synchrony on the landscape. This highlights the importance of fostering landscape variability in the context of ecosystem management given changing disturbance regimes.
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In this study, field sampling and analysis were conducted across environmental gradients following the 2007 Tongue-Crutcher Wildfire in southwestern Idaho to determine the conditions most influential in post-fire vegetation recovery patterns. Duff depth and fire severity were determined to be the most influential factors affecting post-fire vegetation response.
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Collectively, the data analyzed in this study demonstrate that good condition ungrazed Wyoming big sagebrush plant communities exhibited resilience following fire and maintained a native-dominated mosaic of shrubs, bunchgrasses, and forbs. Further, unburned control plots were dominated by woody vegetation and exhibited losses in herbaceous understory, possibly indicating that they are outside of their natural fire return interval.
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This report discusses development of the Rangeland Vegetation Simulator (RVS) and new models for estimating understory conditions in forested landscapes. The RVS is calibrated on 112 unique sites and enables simulation of ecological dynamics, production and fuels in either a spatially explicit manner or as a processor of inventory data much like the FVS. Validation of the RVS, in this inaugural development, suggests significant promise for its use to describe vegetation and fuel data when the structure and composition are given, but its ability to describe succession is limited and in some cases unrealistic.
The premier outputs of the vegetation simulator are:
1) Standing biomass, carbon, and annual production of herbs and shrubs (including standing dead herbaceous material).
2) Vegetation structure, composition, and seral stage
3) Fuelbed properties (1, 10, 100, 1000 hr fuel) and fire behavior fuel models
4) Response of these attributes to herbivory and fire
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This study provides quantitative evidence linking long-term declines of sage-grouse to chronic effects of wildfire. Projected declines may be slowed or halted by targeting fire suppression in remaining areas of intact sagebrush with high densities of breeding sage-grouse.
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This technical manual provides regional accounts of historical and current uses of fire, and then discusses fire effects on wildlife and the challenges of using prescribed fire in each system.
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This paper reports that community results from burn treatments can mean an increase in patchy spatial distribution of ectomycorrhiza (EMF). Quick initiation of EMF recolonization is possible depending on the size of high intensity burn patches, proximity of low and unburned soil, and survival of nearby hosts. The importance of incorporating mixed fire effects in fuel management practices will help to provide EMF refugia for ponderosa pine forest regeneration.