Fuels & Fuel Treatments
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This review suggests that when applied, both prescribed fire and its mechanical surrogates are generally successful in meeting short-term
fuel-reduction objectives and in changing stand structure and fuel beds such that treated stands are more resistant and resilient to high-intensity wildfire.
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This paper reports the effects of the most common forest fuel reduction treatments on carbon pools composed of live and dead biomass as well as potential wildfire emissions from six different sites in four western U.S. states. Research suggests most of the benefits of increased fire resistance can be achieved with relatively small reductions in current carbon stocks. Retaining or growing larger trees also reduced the vulnerability of carbon loss from wildfire. In addition, modeled vulnerabilities to carbon losses and median forest product life spans varied considerably across our study sites, which could be used to help prioritize treatment implementation.
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
Access NICE Net.
NICE Net is a weather station network measuring weather variables to assess climate and reference evapotranspiration across the state of Nevada. The focus of the NICE Net is to measure and provide climate data that are derived from agricultural areas of Nevada for estimating irrigation water requirements.
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This report is intended to introduce policy makers and citizens to issues related to wildfire management and fuel treatments on Idaho’s rangelands. It summarizes the findings of fuel treatment studies on rangelands in Idaho and comparable areas of the western U.S., examines the risks associated with fuel treatment alternatives, summarizes the policies that currently affect fuel treatment implementation, and suggests research and policy alternatives that may increase fuel treatment effectiveness.
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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.
View news release.
This USFS news release reports on the largest ever study of fuel treatment effectiveness, where USFS researchers found that intense thinning treatments leaving 50 and 100 trees/acre are the most effective in reducing the probability of crown fires in the dry forests of the western United States.
View guide.
This guide assimilates post-treatment vegetation and fuels data from Sagebrush Steppe Treatment Evaluation Project (SageSTEP) study sites across six Great Basin states into an assessment tool that can help managers better estimate percent cover, stem density and fuel loadings for post-treatment sites. The post-treatment Guide uses photographs and tables to provide the range of values for each vegetation type allowing users to quickly appraise a site by fuel stratum using an ocular estimate.
View synthesis.
This synthesis addresses seven major conservation practices and two crosscutting issues: prescribed grazing, prescribed burning, brush management, range planting, riparian herbaceous cover, upland wildlife habitat management, herbaceous weed control, landscape analysis, socioeconomics and ecosystem services.
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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.