Treesearch

Coordinated approaches to wildfire risk mitigation strategies that cross-ownership and management boundaries are found in many policies and programs worldwide. The “all lands” approach of the United States (US) National Cohesive Strategy, for example, attempts to address the mismatches between biophysical risk and the social potential to address risks by improving multijurisdictional coordination and collaboration. Local capacity to coordinate wildfire risk mitigation, therefore, may be an important influence on whether risk reduction planning makes success stories out of at-risk communitie...

Pine wilt disease is one of the most serious introduced threats to coniferous forests worldwide. Its causal agent, the pinewood nematode (PWN), Bursaphelenchus xylophilus, is vectored primarily by cerambycids of the genus Monochamus Dejean throughout its native (North America) and introduced (Japan, China, Korea, Taiwan, Portugal) ranges. Despite strict import regulations and phytosanitary measures, interception records indicate that PWN and Monochamus species continue to be moved worldwide. Following its introduction in Portugal in the late 1990s, extensive monitoring programs for PWN and...

The relationship between wildland fire spread rate and wind has been a topic of study for over a century, but few laboratory studies report measurements in controlled winds exceeding 5 m s−1. In this study, measurements of fire rate of spread, flame residence time and energy release are reported for fires burning under controlled atmospheric conditions in shallow beds of pine needles subject to winds ranging from 0 to 27 m s−1 (measured 5 m above ground level). The data suggested that under constant flow conditions when winds are less than 10 m s−1, fire rate of spread increases linearly...

Concerns over wildfire impacts to water supplies have motivated efforts to mitigate risk by reducing forest fuels. Methods to assess fuel treatment effects and prioritise their placement are needed to guide risk mitigation efforts.We present a fuel treatment optimisation model to minimise risk to multiple water supplies based on constraints for treatment feasibility and cost. Risk is quantified as the expected sediment impact costs to water supplies by combining measures of fire likelihood and behaviour, erosion, sediment transport and water supply vulnerability. We demonstrate the model’s...

The high biodiversity of the Mexican montane forests is concentrated on the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, where several Protected Natural Areas exist. Our study examines the projected changes in suitable climatic habitat for five conifer species that dominate these forests. The species are distributed sequentially in overlapping altitudinal bands: Pinus hartwegii at the upper timberline, followed by Abies religiosa, the overwintering host of the Monarch butterfly at the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, P. pseudostrobus, the most important in economic terms, and P. devoniana and P....

Recent epidemics of mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) have fundamentally altered forests of the Intermountain West, impacting management decisions related to fire, logging, and wildlife conservation. We evaluated how a recent mountain pine beetle epidemic influenced the site occupancy of 39 avian species in forests dominated by ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) on the Helena National Forest, Montana. Point count data were collected during the avian breeding seasons (May-July) of 2003-2006 (pre-epidemic) and 2009-2011 (during-epidemic). We used a community-level Bayesian...

Wildfire is an important ecological process that influences species’ occurrence and biodiversity generally. Its effect on bats is understudied, creating challenges for habitat management and species conservation as threats to the taxa worsen globally and within fire-prone ecosystems. We conducted acoustic surveys of wildfire areas during 2014-2017 in conifer forests of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. We tested effects of burn severity and its variation, or pyrodiversity, on occupancy and diversity for the 17-species bat community while accounting for imperfect detection. Occupancy...

In this study, we aim to advance the optimization of daily large fire containment strategies for ground-based suppression resources by leveraging fire risk assessment results commonly used by fire managers in the western USA. We begin from an existing decision framework that spatially overlays fire risk assessment results with pre-identified potential wildland fire operational delineations (PODs), and then clusters PODs into a response POD (rPOD) using a mixed integer program (MIP) model to minimize expected loss. We improve and expand upon this decision framework through enhanced fire...

Recent advances in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have greatly increased oil and gas development on the Little Missouri National Grassland. Natural resource managers need to have ready access to the latest science on the consequences of and issues around oil and gas development.

There are management actions that forest managers can undertake to reduce non-forest conversion. They cannot affect the climate, but they can influence the manner in which fires burn. Managers can reduce the probability of stand-replacing fire with fuel treatments, prescribed fire, and allowing lightning-ignited fire to burn when weather conditions are not extreme.