Fuels & Fuel Treatments
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In this paper, optimization models successfully identified areas with low conifer canopy cover, high resilience and resistance to wildfire and annual grass invasion, and high bird abundance to enhance sage-grouse habitat. The inclusion of mesic resources resulted in further prioritization of areas that were closer to such resources, but also identified potential pathways that connected breeding habitats to the late brood-rearing habitats associated with mesic areas. Areas identified by optimization models were largely consistent with and overlapped ongoing conifer removal efforts in the Warner Mountains of south-central Oregon. Land ownership of preferential areas selected by models varied with priority goals and followed general ownership patterns of the region, with public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management and private lands being selected the most. The increased availability of landscape-level datasets and assessment tools in sagebrush ecosystems can reduce the time and cost of both planning and implementation of habitat projects involving conifer removal. Most importantly, incorporating these new datasets and tools can supplement expert-based knowledge to maximize benefits to sagebrush and sage-grouse conservation.
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This guide establishes interagency prescribed fire complexity analysis standards. The analysis provides a focused, subjective assessment by qualified prescribed fire burn bosses that is evaluated and approved by Agency Administrators, and provides insight and improves understanding of the significant risks associated with prescribed fire. The analysis:
- Provides decision support that highlights the risk to values associated with prescribed fire implementation.
- Identifies the technical difficulty (complexity) of managing the risk to values.
- Informs the complexity rating determination of high, moderate, or low for a prescribed fire.
- Identifies prescribed fire plan elements that may pose special problems or concerns.
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The Interagency Prescribed Fire Planning and Implementation Procedures Guide establishes national interagency standards for the planning and implementation of prescribed fire. These standards:
- Describe what is minimally acceptable for prescribed fire planning and implementation.
- Provide consistent interagency guidance, common terms and definitions, and standardized procedures.
- Make clear that firefighter and public safety is the first priority.
- Ensure that risk management is incorporated into all prescribed fire planning and implementation.
- Support safe, carefully planned, and cost-efficient prescribed fire operations.
- Support use of prescribed fire to reduce wildfire risk to communities, municipal watersheds and other values, and to benefit, protect, maintain, sustain, and enhance natural and cultural resources.
- Support use of prescribed fire to restore natural ecological processes and functions, and to achieve land-management objectives.
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This report describes the role of forest and grassland ecosystems in the carbon cycle and provides information for considering carbon as one of many objectives for land management activities.
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Our results suggest that bird communities in piñon-juniper woodlands can be highly stable when management treatments are conducted in areas with more advanced woodland development and at the level of disturbance measured in our study.
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This study investigated the effects of mastication and hand-thinning treatments in piñon-juniper (PJ) woodlands on ecological processes including fire, and on a wide range of species, particularly vulnerable PJ obligate birds. Treatments drove major, persistent ecological shifts relative to controls. Tree cover and canopy fuels were reduced; concomitantly, down woody surface fuels, forb, and grass cover increased. Treatments exhibited rapid, large, and persistent increases in the frequency, richness, and cover of 20 non-native plant species including cheatgrass. Treatments substantially reduced the occupancy of piñon-juniper specialist and conifer obligate bird species.
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This bulletin summarizes the evaluation of more than 40 years of satellite imagery to determine what happens when a fire burns into a previously burned area. Results from this research are helping land managers to assess whether a previous wildland fire will act as a fuel treatment based on the length of time since the previous fire and local conditions such as ecosystem type, topography, and fire weather conditions. By factoring in the ecological benefits of fire, land managers are able to manage fire in a way that fosters more resilient landscapes.
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This report examines federal officials’ and stakeholders’ views on (1) factors that affect federal-nonfederal collaboration aimed at reducing wildland fire risk to communities and (2) actions that could improve their ability to reduce risk to communities.
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This meta-analysis was conducted to determine if there were consistent responses of understory vegetation to fire and thinning treatments in North American forests that historically experienced frequent surface fire regimes (<20 year fire-return interval, FRI). The most consistent effect of the treatments was the increase in non-native species following mechanical thinning and reduction in shrub cover following a burn. These differences suggest the two treatments may not be surrogates in the short-term (less than 5 years). Prescribed fire and thinning treatments can be used successfully to restore understory species richness and cover, but they can create different conditions and these potentially different outcomes need to be considered in the planning of a fuels reduction treatment.
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This study investigated effects of fall grazing, spring grazing and not grazing on fuel characteristics, fire ignition and initial spread during the wildfire season (July and August) at five shrub steppe sites in Oregon, USA. Both grazing treatments decreased fine fuel biomass, cover and height, and increased fuel moisture, and thereby decreased ignition and initial spread compared with the ungrazed treatment. However, the probability of initial spread was 6-fold greater in the fall-grazed compared with the spring-grazed treatment in August. This suggests that spring grazing may have a greater effect on fires than fall grazing, likely because fall grazing does not influence the current year’s plant growth.