Fuels & Fuel Treatments
View brief.
This brief presents the following findings:
- Overall, mulching treatments in three Colorado conifer forest types promoted denser and more diverse native understory plant communities, particularly over the longer-term.
- The positive effect of mulching on understory plants was largely driven by the response of herbaceous plants; shrubs showed little response to mulching treatments.
- Exotic plants tended to be more common in mulched stands than in untreated stands.
- While understory plants in mulched stands could be heavily suppressed in localized areas where mulch contributed to a deep forest floor, these areas were rare.
View study.
Study results indicate that burning during fescue establishment can prevent proliferation, but burning two years later when fescue had reached peak abundance was ineffective. All three burn treatments that suppressed fescue subsequently enhanced C4 grass production. Researchers suggest that rangeland managers be aware of the potential for sixweeks fescue germination and establishment during warm, wet winters that follow drought years, and consider the use of dormant-season prescribed fire to adaptively reduce negative impacts on forage production.
View brief.
Pinyon jays present both a conservation challenge and a paradox. While the species has declined, its preferred habitat (pinyon-juniper woodlands) has expanded, and in some areas to a large extent. It seems that population declines are not a function of reductions in habitat amount, but are related to changes in habitat quality. Up to now research on the species has been paltry,
and so details about the trend have only recently begun to surface.
View webinar recording.
A Southern Fire Exchange webinar with John Weir of Oklahoma State University and the Oklahoma Prescribed Burn Association. Are you involved in creating, developing, guiding, or supporting a prescribed burn association (PBA)? Are you interested learning how prescribed burn associations work or how they’re successfully sustained? Led by national PBA expert John Weir and supported by other PBA leaders, this webinar discussed a range of common questions faced by PBA organizers and organizations. The webinar started with a short overview of prescribed burn associations, their existing locations, structure and organization. After that introduction, the webinar opened up into an extended question and answer period to address some of the most common issues that come up in PBA development and maintenance.
View article.
This study found that compared with fine mastication treatments, coarse treatments took less time to implement and were more cost-effective. Although laboratory experiments expand our understanding of burning masticated fuels under controlled conditions, they did not readily translate to prescribed burning conditions where fuels, weather and ignition patterns were more variable. This highlights the need for more laboratory experiments and in situ research that together can be used to develop much-needed, scalable predictive models of mastication combustion.
View webinar recording.
This webinar discusses how targeted grazing can reduce fuels to prevent wildfire in shrub-grasslands. Chris Schachtschneider, Eva Strand, and Scott Jensen, University of Idaho, present.
View report.
The importance of cost effective fuel treatment programs has appeared consistently in federal directives (FLAME ACT, National Cohesive Strategy, U.S Department of Interior Office of Policy Analysis) as a priority. Implementing cost effective fuel treatment programs requires a spatially explicit and integrated systematic approach that can be applied to the landscape, program and national scale. The objectives of this study were three-fold. The first objective was to generate cost effective fuel treatment programs at the landscape scale and their impact on the preparedness program. The second objective was to quantify the interrelationship between the fuel program and preparedness program by budget alternative at a landscape scale to provide mangers with the fuel and preparedness budgets that achieve the highest return on investment for any combination of budgets. The third objective was to form cost effective national and regional fuel treatment programs based on the data collected from the landscape analysis that considers national and regional policies.
View article.
We evaluated two juniper removal treatments (Fall, Spring) to restore aspen woodlands in southeast Oregon, spanning a 15-year period. The Fall treatment involved cutting 1/3 of the juniper followed by a high severity broadcast burn one year later in October 2001. The Spring treatment involved cutting 2/3 of the juniper followed by a low severity broadcast burn 18 months later in April 2002. After 15 years, aspen density in the Spring treatment was about 1/3 of the Fall treatment, however, aspen cover did not differ from the Fall treatment. Because spring burning was less effective at removing juniper, leaving about 20% of the mature trees and 50% of the saplings, retreatment of conifers will be necessary to maintain the aspen community. If an objective is to maintain or increase native understories the Spring treatment was more effective than the Fall treatment for recovering the shrub layer.
Developing Treatment Alternatives
Treatment comparison is one of the more complex parts of the IFTDSS app. There’s no doubt that comparing landscapes is tricky business. If you find yourself scratching your head or staring at the screen a lot, join us to help take some of the mystery out of landscape comparisons! Recorded 13 April 2018.
Modeling and Reports
The beauty of IFTDSS is that nearly everything is exportable as a report or summary. With a fairly large number of items on each report it’s easy to get lost. Join us to take some of the mystery out of IFTDSS reports and reporting. Recorded 30 March 2018.
Landscapes and Editing
Trying to figure out how to edit landscapes in IFTDSS or just interested in picking up some tips and tricks to do it better? This webinar is for those trying to learn how to edit landscapes in IFTDSS to better represent their area! Recorded 23 March 2018.
IFTDSS Map Studio Demonstration
In this webinar we demonstrate using Map Studio for finding an area of interest, adding landscapes and model runs, and working with shapes and shapefiles. Recorded 16 March 2018.
Navigating IFTDSS
This demonstration highlights the overall layout of IFTDSS. It includes the Planning Cycle, file storage in My Workspace, Map Studio interface, and Modeling Playground. Recorded 9 March 2018.
IFTDSS Demonstration and Discussion
This demonstration of IFTDSS, and the following discussion, was a presentation to the Fire Science Exchange Network on September 21, 2017.
View webinar recording.
While fuel treatments in the dry conifer forests of the inland western U.S. are effective at reducing wildfire spread and severity at the stand-level, how effective are they at changing wildfire activity at the landscape scale? And will current management practices be sufficient as forests and climate change over the next century? Brooke Cassell presents the results of her recently-defended dissertation on the effects of fuel treatments in the southern Malheur National Forest and surrounding landscape. This study used a dynamic forest landscape model to compare alternative management strategies’ effects on wildfire activity under contemporary and extreme weather scenarios.