Treesearch

Fire Regime Condition Class (FRCC) is a departure index that compares the current amounts of the different vegetation succession classes, fire frequency, and fire severity to historic reference conditions. FRCC assessments have been widely used for evaluating ecosystem status in many areas of the U.S. in reports such as land use plans, fire management plans, project plans, burn plans, and agency reporting.

Past fire exclusion policies and fire suppression actions have led to a historic "fire deficit" on public wildlands. These sociocultural actions have led to unprecedented environmental changes that have created conditions conducive to more frequent large-scale wildfires. Politicians, the newsmedia, and agency officials portray large wildland fires as catastrophes and unnatural disasters, but these fires could actually provide fire managers unique opportunities to recover fire-dependent species and restore fire-adapted ecosystems that have been adversely affected by the fire deficit. This...

When managing for fire across a large landscape, the types of fuel treatments, the locations of treatments, and the percentage of the landscape being treated should all interact to impact not only potential fire size, but also carbon dynamics across that landscape. To investigate these interactions, we utilized a forest growth model (FVS-FFE) and fire simulation software (FlamMap, Randig), integrated through GIS software (ArcMap9.3), to quantify the impacts that varied landscape-scale fuel treatments have on burn probability, fire size, short-term carbon loss, and long-term carbon storage....

Federal wildfire managers often want to know, over large landscapes, where wildfires are likely to occur and how intense they may be. To meet this need we developed a map that we call wildland fire potential (WFP) - a raster geospatial product that can help to inform evaluations of wildfire risk or prioritization of fuels management needs across very large spatial scales (millions of acres). Our specific objective with the WFP map was to depict the relative potential for wildfire that would be difficult for suppression resources to contain. To create the 2012 version, we built upon spatial...

San Diego County, California, holds the records for the largest area burned and greatest number of structures destroyed in California. This paper analyzes 102 years of fire history, population growth, and weather records from 1910 through 2012 to examine the factors that are driving the wildfire system. Annual area burned is compared with precipitation during the winter preceding the summer-fall fire season and with a five-year running average precipitation. All fires over 4 000 ha from 1950 through 2012 are examined for fuel age at the section of origin, fuel type, and weather, including...

Wildland fire managers must frequently make meaning from chaos in order to protect communities and infrastructure from the negative impacts of fire. Fire management personnel are increasingly turning to science to support their experience-based decision-making processes and to provide clear, confident leadership for communities frequently exposed to risk from wildfire. The inclusion of science into their thought processes helps these decisions to be more consistent, accurate, reliable and defendable in an environment where the risk and impact of incidents continues to increase.

Management activities, applied over broad scales, can potentially affect attributes of fire regimes including fire severity. Wilderness landscapes provide a natural laboratory for exploring effects of management because in some federally designated wilderness areas the burning of naturally ignited fires is promoted. In order to better understand the contribution of fire management activities to fire effects, we examined patterns of severity across a management gradient defined by wilderness-non-wilderness boundaries in a northern Rocky Mountain study region. We identified a significant...

Designation of safety zones is a primary duty of all wildland firefighters. Unfortunately, information regarding what constitutes an adequate safety zone is inadequately defined. Measurements of energy release from wildland fires have been used to develop an empirically based safety zone guideline. The basis for this work is described here.

Towers and poles supporting power transmission and telecommunication lines have collapsed due to heating from wildland fires. Such occurrences have led to interruptions in power or communication in large municipal areas with associated social and political implications as well as increased immediate danger to humans. Unfortunately, no studies address the question of what is the appropriate clearance needed to prevent damage to the conductors and support towers by wildland fires. This study presents preliminary findings from two independent studies focused on this question. Findings suggest...

Over the past two decades, wildland fire professionals have been confronted with worsening conditions and complex challenges that cry out for change and new ways of thinking. However, change requires a framework within which people reliably translate policy into timely, effective action. Doctrine, or a body of teachings, instructions, taught principles, or positions, may represent a framework within which land management agencies and rural fire services might change to confront their challenges.