Innovations for Fire Managers

Fire managers need relevant fire science and technology to assess safe burning conditions, evaluate ignition patterns, and meet their goals. Station research investigates the interactions of fire, soil, water, and air quality, and the influence of fire behavior and regimes on vegetation, wildlife, and ecosystem processes. This understanding is critical to making the best policy, planning, and management decisions concerning desired ecosystem composition, structure, and function. Inclusion of this information in existing models and the development of new models will improve the ability of managers to employ fire as a tool for northeastern and midwestern land management.

Featured Partnerships 

• Fire managers need relevant fire science and technology to assess safe burning conditions, evaluate ignition patterns, and meet their goals. Scientists with the Northern and Southern Research Stations collaborate with the Eastern Innovation Landscape Network to connect land managers and researchers together to accelerate the development and use of technologies that meet evolving land management needs.
• The Northern Research Station actively collaborates with the Joint Fire Science Program's Fire Science Exchange Networks across the eastern United States. These networks include: North Atlantic Fire Science Exchange, Oak Woodlands & Forests Fire Consortium, Lake States Fire Science Consortium, and the Consortium of Appalachian Fire Managers and Scientists. Through these partnerships, we are working to increase the availability and consideration of sound science for land management decision-making.

Featured Research

• Utilizing prescribed fire as an ecological restoration tool offers a promising approach to reduce tick populations and mitigate tick-borne diseases. By understanding the ecological role of fire and incorporating prescribed burning into tick management strategies, we can take proactive measure to protect public health and restore fire-dependent landscapes
• Multiple concurrent studies are examining best management practices for using prescribed burning to restore and manage oak and oak-pine ecosystems. This research demonstrates prescribed burning effects on forest composition and structure, native understory plant responses, above-and below-ground carbon storage, and on measures of soil health including microbial biomass, nutrient availability, and infiltration. This research is directly informing silvicultural and fire management strategies on National Forest lands.
• QUIC-FIRE is a physics-based fire simulation model that integrates wind dynamics and fuel combustion information to predict fire spread and intensity under various conditions.
• Natural resource managers seeking to restore oak forest communities need the best available science to support forest management strategies aimed at sustaining oak ecosystems. In a recent study, repeated prescribed fires with or without mechanical treatments were found to be effective in increasing oak-hickory regeneration and ground layer diversity.

• The SheFire model is an open-source program that uses soil temperature to help researchers and land managers quantify and understand the effects of fire on soil health and seedling survival.