Treesearch

Historically, models and systems for fuels management have been developed independently without a great deal of coordination, leading to varying degrees of overlapping functionality. Additionally, as Gail Wells noted in the December 2009 issue of Fire Science Digest, the onus of reviewing, selecting, and using a specific tool often falls on the fire manager. To increase efficiency, reduce redundancies, and make the tool-selection process easier for fire managers, a solution was needed that incorporated several fuels management tools in one framework. The Joint Fire Science Program, a...

Managing ecosystems in an era of rapid change is inherently challenging not only because of uncertainty in future climate but also due to diverse responses of ecosystems to climate. Projections of ecological transformation alongside information about plausible vegetation trajectories can help land managers explore divergent scenarios and consider how modeled outcomes match their observations. Climate‐analog impact models (AIMs) compare environmental information (e.g., vegetation types) between sets of climatically similar locations to infer change and can be used to identify multiple...

Wildfire activity in the Southeastern United States is shaped by unique ecological and climatic conditions that differ markedly from those in other regions of the country. Despite increasing recognition of fire’s ecological importance and rising risks under climate change, regional-scale projections of wildfire behavior in the Southeast remain limited. In this study, we applied the Large Fire Simulator (FSim), a stochastic, spatially explicit fire behavior model, to simulate ignition, spread, suppression, and containment of wildfires within a Florida flatwoods pyrome under both historical...

Horizontally continuous fuel types such as pine litter can sustain flame spread along individual fuel particles, but little is known about how wind affects flame behavior at this fine scale.We conducted experiments to examine flame spread rates along thin horizontal fuel particles (cardboard and pine needles) where wind speed and particle orientation relative to wind direction were varied.The wind speed was controlled by mounting a fuel sample on a rotating disk turning at a specified rate.Video measurements showed that flame spread rates on fuel samples varied with fuel orientation angle...

The ignition of small fuel elements plays a crucial role in fire propagation. These fine fuels are often the first to ignite and serve as a bridge for fire spread to larger scenarios. The moisture content of these fuels significantly affects their flammability and thermal behaviour. In this study, the effect of fuel moisture content (FMC) and orientation on the drying, pyrolysis, ignition, and thermal processes of a cellulose solid fuel is investigated through a series of numerical simulations. In addition, experimental ignition-time measurements were conducted at the U.S. Forest Service...

Crib fires are a way to produce fires with higher repeatability than generally is the case for wildland and urban scenarios and consequently are used to study fire behavior. Models for simulating large-scale fires benefit from characterization against relevant test conditions. Here we describe a modeling and experimental effort to better explore fire dynamics at the larger range of what is achievable in laboratories. The modeling that corresponds to the tests is used to provide parameters to larger-scale transport modeling efforts for climate effects as well as to evaluate modeling under...

Wildfires have increasingly affected human and natural systems across the western United States (WUS) in recent decades. Given that the majority of ignitions are human‐caused and potentially preventable, improving the ability to predict fire occurrence is critical for effective wildfire prevention and risk mitigation. We used over 500,000 wildfire ignition records from 2000 to 2020 to develop machine learning models that predict daily ignition probability across the WUS and incorporate a wide range of physical, biological, social, and administrative variables. A key innovation of this work...

Public lands are sources of valuable ecological, social, cultural, economic, scientific, and recreational resources in the United States. Wildfires may threaten the continued provision of some of these benefits. Fire management on public lands is increasingly challenging due to the growing array of human activities responsible for fires, including recreational target shooting. We used detailed information in agency fire reports from 1992 to 2020 to advance our understanding of contemporary wildfire ignition sources and patterns on a subset of public lands managed by the Bureau of Land...

Wildfires are burning more area across the western US than they have in the recent past, driving an increased need for post-fire reforestation. At the same time, trees are struggling to keep up with climate change and post-fire tree planting may present an opportunity to plant seedlings from seed sources adapted to changing conditions. To better understand how reforestation outcomes for an ecologically and economically important conifer species in the northwestern US vary with seed source and site conditions, we conducted a post-fire western larch ( Larix occidentalis ) planting experiment...

The Mendocino National Forest reached out to the public in 2023 and 2024 to understand community connections to the forest and hear ideas about how to recover after recent wildland fires. We heard from 523 people over two months! Over 60% of those who participated had lived in the area for more than 25 years. For over half of participants (54%), this was their first time providing input to the Mendocino National Forest. The M3P tool (Mapping, Prioritization and Public Participation) was used to gather and understand public input. This executive summary provides key highlights from these...