Treesearch

Both satellite imagery and spatial fire effects models are valuable tools for generating burn severity maps that are useful to fire scientists and resource managers. The purpose of this study was to test a new mapping approach that integrates imagery and modeling to create more accurate burn severity maps. We developed and assessed a statistical model that combines the Relative differenced Normalized Burn Ratio, a satellite image-based change detection procedure commonly used to map burn severity, with output from the Fire Hazard and Risk Model, a simulation model that estimates fire...

We estimate biomass burning and anthropogenic emissions of black carbon (BC) in the western US for May-October 2006 by inverting surface BC concentrations from the Interagency Monitoring of PROtected Visual Environment (IMPROVE) network using a global chemical transport model. We first use active fire counts from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) to improve the spatiotemporal distributions of the biomass burning BC emissions from the Global Fire Emissions Database (GFEDv2). The adjustment primarily shifts emissions from late to middle and early summer (a 33%...

We demonstrated the utility of digital fire atlases by analyzing forest fire extent across cold, dry, and mesic forests, within and outside federally designated wilderness areas during three different fire management periods: 1900 to 1934, 1935 to 1973, and 1974 to 2008. We updated an existing atlas with a 12 070 086 ha recording area in Idaho and Montana, USA, west of the Continental Divide, 81 % of which is forested. This updated atlas was derived from records maintained locally by 12 national forests and Glacier National Park. Within the cold, dry, and mesic forests that encompass 45 %,...

Reliable predictions of fuel consumption are critical in the eastern United States (US), where prescribed burning is frequently applied to forests and air quality is of increasing concern. CONSUME and the First Order Fire Effects Model (FOFEM), predictive models developed to estimate fuel consumption and emissions from wildland fires, have not been systematically evaluated for application in the eastern US using the same validation data set. In this study, we compiled a fuel consumption data set from 54 operational prescribed fires (43 pine and 11 mixed hardwood sites) to assess each...

Live fuel moisture content (LFMC), the ratio of water mass to dry mass contained in live plant material, is an important fuel property for determining fire danger and for modeling fire behavior. Remote sensing estimation of LFMC often relies on an assumption of changing water and stable dry mass over time. Fundamental understanding of seasonal variation in plant water and dry mass is needed to explain the spectral expression of LFMC changes over time. We conducted a five-month experiment to continuously measure field LFMC samples, biochemical components of dry matter, and leaf spectroscopic...

In IMAGINING FIRE FUTURES, students in a high school or college class use model results to develop a vision of the future for Flathead County, Montana. This is a rural area in the northern Rocky Mountains where more than half of the landscape is covered by wildland ecosystems that have evolved with and are shaped by wildland fire.

Mega-fires are often defined according to their size and intensity but are more accurately described by their socioeconomic impacts. Three factors - climate change, fire exclusion, and antecedent disturbance, collectively referred to as the "mega-fire triangle" - likely contribute to today's mega-fires. Some characteristics of mega-fires may emulate historical fire regimes and can therefore sustain healthy fire-prone ecosystems, but other attributes decrease ecosystem resiliency. A good example of a program that seeks to mitigate mega-fires is located in Western Australia, where prescribed...

Radioactive contamination in Ukraine, Belarus and Russia after the Chernobyl accident left large rural and forest areas to their own fate. Forest succession in conjunction with lack of forest management started gradually transforming the landscape. During the last 28 years dead wood and litter have dramatically accumulated in these areas, whereas climate change has increased temperature and favored drought. The present situation in these forests suggests an increased risk of wildfires, especially after the pronounced forest fires of 2010, which remobilized Chernobyl-deposited radioactive...

Douglas-fir forests in the interior Pacific Northwest are subject to sporadic outbreaks of the western spruce budworm, a species widely recognized as the most destructive defoliator in western North America. Outbreaks of the western spruce budworm often occur synchronously over broad regions and lead to widespread loss of leaf area and decrease in growth rates in affected stands. In spite of the ecological and economic significance of this defoliator, the mechanisms controlling this species' population dynamics are still not fully understood. We used dendrochronological methods to reconstru...

For this study three types of wind models have been defined for simulating surface wind flow in support of wildland fire management: (1) a uniform wind field (typically acquired from coarse-resolution (,4 km) weather service forecast models); (2) a newly developed mass-conserving model and (3) a newly developed mass and momentumconserving model (referred to as the momentum-conserving model). The technical foundation for the two new modelling approaches is described, simulated surface wind fields are compared to field measurements, and the sensitivity of the new model types to mesh resolutio...