Fire Ecology & Effects
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This study reviewed and synthesized the published literature on modifications to fuels and fire characteristics following beetle-caused tree mortality. The literature agreed about responses in many conditions, including fuels measurements and changes in stands with longer times since outbreak. Disagreement or gaps in knowledge existed in several conditions, particularly in early post outbreak phases and crown fire behavior responses.
Visit SageSTEP website.
SageSTEP is a long-term multidisciplinary experiment evaluating methods of sagebrush steppe restoration in the Great Basin.
You can find and access information on this project’s:
- Land management treatments
- Treatment effects on vegetation and fuels; soils and biogeochemistry; water runoff and erosion; wildlife and insects
- The economics and human perspectives of management treatments
- Association with climate change
- Research findings thus far and project future
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This study compared unburned and burned sites to determine how cheatgrass and native wheatgrass abundance and distribution varied. Wheatgrass density increased in high-nutrient areas. Soil cores from burned microsites were also transplanted to a controlled area and seeded with either wheatgrass or cheatgrass to determine microsite effects on plant establishment and growth. There were differences in microsite soil properties, which were not affected by plant growth, and differences in growth but not establishment of grass seeds. Microsites are likely important for post-fire resistance of rangeland to cheatgrass establishment.
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This Joint Fire Science Program brief addresses whether or not beetles are setting the stage for larger, more severe wildfires and fires are bringing on beetle epidemics.
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The objectives of this study were to investigate the effects of recent prescribed fires, resource benefit fires, and repeated fires in ponderosa pine forests, as well as recent resource benefit fires in pinyon-juniper woodlands. Results are pertinent to fire and fuels managers throughout the southwestern United States who utilize prescribed and resource benefit fire to reduce fuel loads and restore historical forest conditions.
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This research brief discusses the effects of fire and invasive species on biological, chemical, and physical properties of desert soils. Although soil may recover from the impacts of fire during succession, these changes are permanent under persistent invasive species. The most severe effects of fire occur under high temperatures with high fuel buildup and soil moisture that conducts heat downward.
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This report provides managers with the current state of knowledge regarding the effectiveness of fuel treatments for mitigating severe wildfire effects. A literature review examines the effectiveness of fuel treatments that had been previously applied and were subsequently burned through by wildfire in forests and rangelands. A case study focuses on WUI fuel treatments that were burned in the 2007 East Zone and Cascade megafires in central Idaho. Both the literature review and case study results support a manager consensus that forest thinning followed by some form of slash removal is most effective for reducing subsequent wildfire severity.
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This paper provides a decision framework that integrates fire regime components, plant growth form, and survival attributes to predict how plants will respond to fires and how fires can be prescribed to enhance the likelihood of obtaining desired plant responses.
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This synthesis contains 14 chapters that cover fire and forests, machinery, erosion processes, water yield and quality, soil and riparian impacts, aquatic and landscape effects, and predictive tools and procedures. These chapters provide an overview of our current understanding of the cumulative watershed effects of fuel management in the western United States.
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This study compared historical and prescribed fire regimes for different regions in the United States and synthesized literature on season of prescribed burning. In regions and vegetation types where considerable differences in fuel consumption exist among burning seasons, the effects of prescribed fire season appears to be driven more by fire-intensity differences among seasons than by phenology. Where fuel consumption differs little among burning seasons, the effect of phenology or growth stage of organisms is often more apparent.