Treesearch

(1) Background: Federal land managers in the US are charged with risk-based decision-making which requires them to know the risk and to direct resources accordingly. Without understanding the specific factors that produce risk, it is difficult to identify strategies to reduce it. (2) Methods: Risk characterized by U.S. land managers during wildfires was evaluated from 2010-2017 to identify factors driving risk perceptions. Annotation from 282 wildfires in two regions with distinctive risk profiles, the Northwest and Southwest Geographic Areas, were qualitatively coded using the risk...

Cairpol and Aeroqual air quality sensors measuring CO, CO2, NO2, and other species were tested on fresh biomass burning plumes in field and laboratory environments. We evaluated the sensors by comparing 1 min sensor measurements to collocated reference instrument measurements. The sensors were evaluated based on the coefficient of determination (r2) between the sensor and reference measurements, as well as by the accuracy, collocated precision, root mean square error (RMSE), and other metrics. In general, CO and CO2 sensors performed well (in terms of accuracy and r2 values) compared to...

Wildland firefighters must be able to maintain situational awareness to ensure their safety. Crew members, including lookouts and crew building handlines, rely on visibility to assess risk and communicate changing conditions. Geographic information systems and remote sensing offer potential solutions for characterizing visibility using models incorporating terrain and vegetation height. Visibility can be assessed using viewshed algorithms, and while previous research has demonstrated the utility of these algorithms across multiple fields, their use in wildland firefighter safety has yet to...

Fire is a natural ecosystem process that helps maintain and revitalize healthy landscapes, but wildfires can pose significant threats to public and firefighter safety, property, water and air quality, and other values. Finding an appropriate balance of managing for the beneficial and detrimental impacts of fire can be a challenge, and in many forest and grassland ecosystems, a legacy of fire exclusion and changes in land use patterns has led to unnatural accumulations of flammable vegetation and increasing wildfire hazard. Wildfire management entails a breadth of actions taken before,...

Development of landscape connectivity and spatial population models is challenging, given the uncertainty of parameters and the sensitivity of models to factors and their interactions over time. Using spatially and temporally explicit simulations, we evaluate the sensitivity of population distribution, abundance and connectivity of tigers in Southeast Asia to variations of resistance surface, dispersal ability, population density and mortality. Utilizing a temporally dynamic cumulative resistant kernel approach, we tested (1) effects and interactions of parameters on predicted population...

The USDA Forest Service anticipated that COVID-19 outbreaks among fire management personnel would potentially impact the agency’s ability to maintain the readiness of the wildland fire system and to respond to large complex wildfires across the country. In response, the agency implemented emergency action plans across the United States in March 2020 to reduce spread of COVID-19. When pandemic conditions were first emerging and information about how to mitigate risk of the virus was highly uncertain, fire personnel were learning to adapt their everyday work practices and to navigate an...

This paper presents the LPMLEn, a new method to estimate vertical flux and thermal diffusivity from streambed temperature time series using the frequency domain. The main advantages of this new method are: (a) the use of multiple frequencies and multiple sensors for the parameter estimation; (b) noise/uncertainty handling in an optimal way; (c) the possibility to estimate the parameters with both semi-infinite and bounded domain models; and (d) the compensation for temperature drifts in the data known as transients. The capabilities of the LPMLEn are demonstrated using both synthetic and...

Widespread concern about ecological degradation has prompted development of concepts and exploration of methods to quantify ecological quality with the aim of measuring ecosystem changes to contribute to future policy-making. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for ecological quality measurement based on current ecosystem functions and biodiverse habitat, compared with pixel-scale historical baselines. The framework was applied to evaluate the changes and driving factors of ecological quality for Chinese terrestrial ecosystems through remote sensing-based and ecosystem process...

Vegetation changes can strongly influence the hydrological cycle, including streamflow, but the effects of plant diseases have seldom been described. In the mid-20th century, the invasion of an exotic disease, white pine blister rust, precipitated widespread mortality of western white pine (WWP; Pinus monticola Dougl.) in the northern Rocky Mountains, USA. These events converted a forest dominated by white pine into one dominated by more shade-tolerant tree species. The long-term hydrological implications of this historical shift in forest composition have not been adequately explored, in...

Wildfires, which are increasing in frequency and severity in the western U.S., impact water quality through increases in erosion, and transport of nutrients and metals. Meanwhile, beaver populations have been increasing since the early 1900s, and the ponds they create slow or impound hydrologic and elemental fluxes, increase soil saturation, and have a high potential to transform redox active elements (e.g., oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, and metals). However, it remains unknown how the presence of beaver ponds in burned watersheds may impact retention and transformation of chemical constituents...