Fuels & Fuel Treatments
View brief.
Study findings include:
- From 2011-2017, the extent of conifer cover in sagebrush country decreased by 1.6%. Human management efforts are responsible for 2/3 of the total reduction; the other 1/3 is due to wildfires.
- Previous estimates suggest that conifer cover in sagebrush country is growing by 0.4%-1.5% annually, which means that our efforts are keeping pace with conifer encroachment but that more needs to be done.
- Public/private partnerships are successfully reducing conifers in highly targeted priority watersheds, such as in northwest Utah.
- The maps also show that woodlands are still expanding into many sagebrush landscapes. Continued partnership efforts are needed to strategically conserve priority shrublands.
View study.
Many studies have examined how fuels, topography, climate, and fire weather influence fire severity. Less is known about how different forest management practices influence fire severity in multi‐owner landscapes, despite costly and controversial suppression of wildfires that do not acknowledge ownership boundaries. In 2013, the Douglas Complex burned over 19,000 ha of Oregon & California Railroad (O&C) lands in Southwestern Oregon, USA. O&C lands are composed of a checkerboard of private industrial and federal forestland (Bureau of Land Management, BLM) with contrasting management objectives, providing a unique experimental landscape to understand how different management practices influence wildfire severity. Leveraging Landsat based estimates of fire severity (Relative differenced Normalized Burn Ratio, RdNBR) and geospatial data on fire progression, weather, topography, pre‐fire forest conditions, and land ownership, we asked (1) what is the relative importance of different variables driving fire severity, and (2) is intensive plantation forestry associated with higher fire severity?
View infographic.
Reasons and consequences of pinyon-juniper expansion and treatment options are provided in a graphic summary.
View article.
Today many forested landscapes in western states have a “fire debt.” Humans have prevented normal levels of fire from occurring, and the bill has come due. Increasingly severe weather conditions and longer fire seasons due to climate change are making fire management problems more pressing today than they were just a few decades ago. And the problem will only get worse.
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This study evaluated whether tree removal by burning can decrease late‐succession woodland ecohydrologic resilience by increasing vegetation and ground cover over a 9‐year period after fire and whether the soil erosion feedback on late‐succession woodlands is reversible by burning. To address these questions, we employed a suite of vegetation and soil measurements and rainfall simulation and concentrated overland flow experiments across multiple plot scales on unburned and burned areas at two sagebrush sites in the later stages of woodland succession.
Linear fuel breaks may help reduce wildfire intensity and spread, and at the same time improve firefighting effectiveness, but their ecological impacts may include habitat loss and fragmentation, as well as facilitation of species movement. There is very little peer‐reviewed science available to inform land managers about the ecological effects of fuel breaks. As such, land managers may face trade‐offs with uncertain outcomes: either substantially alter habitats with fuel breaks to potentially minimize wildfire impacts or risk increased habitat loss and degradation from wildfire. The Great Basin region of the western US offers an opportunity to better understand the relative costs and benefits of fuel breaks, and to identify key knowledge gaps
View paper.
Overall, greater sage-grouse selected areas that were 1) distant from trees, paved roads, and powerlines; 2) high in elevation; 3) near treatment edges; and 4) consisting of gentle slopes. Post-treatment sage-grouse showed stronger selection for treatments and treatment edges than did pretreatment sage-grouse. Maps predicting probability of selection by brood-rearing sage-grouse showed increased use in and around mechanically treated areas. This altered pattern of selection by sage-grouse with broods suggests mechanical treatments may be a suitable way to increase use of mountain big sagebrush during the brooding period.
More information and to register.
A two day workshop May 17-18 at Blodgett Forest Research Station, Georgetown, CA – designed for landowners and managers looking to gain skills in prescribed fire planning and implementation.
Day One:
Local fire history and current fire research
Prescribed fire permitting and legal considerations
Cal Fire’s Vegetation Management Program
Fire weather forecasting and online tools
Air quality and smoke management
Prescribed burn associations
Fire terms and fire behavior
Burn plan development
Burn unit preparation
Tools and equipment
Day Two:
Day two will consist of morning training followed by on the ground prescribed fire demonstration (pending weather and permits). Participants must attend both days to partake in burning. If unable to perform burn for any reason day two will include a tour of recent prescribed fire activity and research at Blodgett Forest Research Station.
View brief.
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.
View article.
Our key findings concerning changing fuels and forest structure following a MPB epidemic in south-central Oregon lodgepole pine forests include: 1-h fuels and litter changed little over time, surface fuel loads changed dramatically between the standing snag and the regeneration stages, lodgepole pine remained dominant, and canopy bulk density was low throughout the chronosequence. These factors point to the perpetuation of a lodgepole pine dominated system with a mixed-severity fire regime well into the future.