Treesearch

Heavy loading of aerosols in China is widely known, but little is known about their impact on regional radiation budgets, which is often expressed as aerosol radiative forcing (ARF). Cloud‐free direct ARF has either been estimated by models across the region or determined at a handful of locations with aerosol and/or radiation measurements. In this study, ARF is determined at 25 stations distributed across China where aerosol optical thickness has been measured since 2004. In combination with the single‐scattering albedo retrieved from ground and satellite measurements, ARF was determined...

Some of today's firefighters weren't even born when the Fire Effects Information System (FEIS) (Web site ) "hit the streets" in 1986. Managers might remember using a dial-up connection in the early 1990s to access information on biology, ecology, and fire offered by FEIS.

From the parking lot, the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana, could pass for a school, except that one end has a 73-foot-high block of reinforced concrete topped by what looks like a giant golf ball. The block is a combustion chamber for experimental burning, and the ball is part of a satellite station that receives data used to map North American wildfires, a function unheard of when the Fire Lab was established in 1960.

Although burn severity maps derived from satellite imagery provide a landscape view of fire impacts, fire effects simulation models can provide spatial fire severity estimates and add a biotic context in which to interpret severity. In this project, we evaluated two methods of mapping burn severity in the context of rapid post-fire assessment for four wildfires in western Montana using 64 plots as field reference: (1) an image-based burn severity mapping approach using the Differenced Normalised Burn Ratio, and (2) a fire effects simulation approach using the FIREHARM model. The image-based...

The Davis Fire presents an interesting example of fire behavior in subalpine fir, partially dead lodgepole pine with multiple age classes, and moist site Douglas-fir vegetation types. This has been summer of moderate temperatures and intermittent moisture that has kept live herbaceous and live woody moistures fairly high and dead fuel moistures at a moderate level. Although the understory vegetation in the uplands has been consumed within the majority of the burn area, immediate vegetation response is expected due to available moisture and the ability of grouse whortleberry and beargrass...

FIA is responsible for periodic assessments of the status and trends of the renewable resources of America's forests. Fundamental to the accomplishment of these assessments are the State-by-State resource inventories, which are now conducted on an annual basis. This report summarizes the results, interpretations, and future significance of Utah's annual inventory. The organization and layout of this report begins with a short introduction of FIA's annual inventory system and then a detailed description of its inventory methods. After an overview of the report tables, the bulk of the report...

The BehavePlus fire modeling system is a computer program that is based on mathematical models that describe wildland fire behavior and effects and the fire environment. It is a flexible system that produces tables, graphs, and simple diagrams. It can be used for a host of fire management applications, including projecting the behavior of an ongoing fire, planning prescribed fire, assessing fuel hazard, and training. This report documents the BehavePlus design and features to help users better understand the system and use it more effectively. It is based in part on material in a series of...

Ribes (currants and gooseberries) are telial hosts for the introduced and invasive white pine blister rust fungus, Cronartium ribicola. Knowledge of wild and introduced Ribes helps us understand the epidemiology of blister rust on its aecial hosts, white pines, and develop disease control and management strategies. Ribes differ by species in their contribution to initial establishment and subsequent intensification of blister rust. Their significance to pine infection depends on their inherent capacities to become infected and support spore production, their abundance and environmental...

In September 2007, bark samples were collected from the root collar of a single Araucaria araucana tree that had recently died and was suspected of being killed by Armillaria root disease. Disease symptoms and signs included a thinning crown and fruiting bodies at the tree base over a several-year period before tree death.

The rust, Puccinia psidii, was first found on the leaves, stems and fruit of guava in Brazil in 1894 (Winter, 1984). As a result, it was first called guava rust. It has subsequently been identified in other countries of the western hemisphere including Paraguay in 1884, Uruguay in 1989, Puerto Rico in 1913, Colombia in 1913, Cuba in 1926, Jamaica in 1936, Florida in 1979, Mexico in 1981, El Salvador in 1987 (Simpson et al, 2006). It has also been found in California in 2004. This progression of finds suggests that this rust fungus has been moving to new locations, especially in a northerly...