Treesearch

The effort to utilize satellite-based MODIS, AVHRR, and GOES fire detections from the Hazard Monitoring System (HMS) to identify undocumented fires in Florida and improve the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) mapping process has yielded promising results. This method was augmented using regression tree models to identify burned/not-burned pixels (BnB) in every Landsat scene (1984–2012) in Worldwide Referencing System 2 Path/Rows 16/40, 17/39, and 1839. The burned area delineations were combined with the HMS detections to create burned area polygons attributed with their date of...

The use of prescribed fire has increased dramatically over the last 15 years in the Appalachian Mountains; managers are interested in tracking the effects of their fire programs. Since the mid-1990s, Southern Region National forests have been required to collect data on fuels and vegetation in permanent plots. However, lack of personnel dedicated to this effort has limited the number of plots each forest is capable of maintaining. Thus, National forests are encouraged to work across boundaries and share information with neighboring districts, National forests, and agencies with similar...

Much of the language used by the wildland fire community and news media has implicit anti-fire bias that perpetuates anti-fire attitudes. In order to promote greater fire use for ecological fire management, new words need to be created; existing words should be redefined; and new identities for fire management workers must be developed. FUSEE presents some examples of the new words, symbols, and slogans it uses in its public education and policy advocacy work to nurture pro-fire attitudes and help support a paradigm shift in fire management. This paper argues that other agencies, organizati...

Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE) is a national nonprofit organization promoting safe, ethical, ecological wildland fire management. FUSEE members include current, former, and retired wildland firefighters; fire managers, scientists, and educators; forest conservationists; and other interested citizens who support FUSEE’s holistic fire management vision.

Shortleaf pine (Pinus echinata Mill.) is capable of sprouting after the stem is killed. The sprouting ability of shortleaf pine could be used to favor the species silviculturally for specific management objectives. Information is limited on burning effects at different periods of the growing season on shortleaf pine survival and growth. This study was located on the Cumberland Plateau region of east Tennessee and was conducted on one-year-old seedlings. Replicated treatments analyzed as a randomized block design included: clipping in March, burning in April, burning in July, burning in...

Throughout much of the Central Hardwoods region, the use of prescribed fire on public lands has increased rapidly in the last decade to improve oak regeneration. While prescribed fire can favor oak regeneration, its use may also increase risk of invasion and expansion of nonnative invasive species (NNIS). Although fire has often been shown to facilitate the expansion of NNIS in the Western United States, much less in known about the effects of fire on invasives in the Eastern United States. In 2008, a team of Ohio scientists and land managers initiated a Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP)...

Southern Appalachian montane wetlands are rare natural communities. Distributed throughout the Appalachians’ high-elevation depressions, valley slopes, and basins, a highly variable combination of abiotic factors shape the character of each “bog.” Most unaltered bogs are distinguished by a generally open vegetative structure and diverse herbaceous flora, but with a tendency toward succession to forests. Natural disturbances arrest some bogs in early seres. However, anthropogenic influence has increasingly precluded many such disturbance regimes, resulting in uninhibited succession, habitat...

Many researchers and resource managers advocate an increase in fire use to restore fire regimes similar to thoseunder which the vegetation of the Appalachian Mountains developed. Restoring fire implies a need to establish historicalreference conditions. We have developed dendroecological reconstructions of fire history and forest dynamics for a networkof sites in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Estimates of fire frequency for these sitesindicate that fire typically returned at intervals of 2-19 years. Burning occurred at a relatively steady level under...

Charcoal particles in soils and sediments of the Appalachian region provide evidence of long-term fire history relevant to resource management and to studies of paleoclimate, vegetation history, and the effects of prehistoric and historic humans on the environment. Charcoal records of fire history are of low resolution in comparison to dendrochronological records, but reach well beyond the oldest trees in most areas, providing evidence of fires thousands or tens of thousands of years ago. We focus here on fire history reconstruction from soil charcoal, which provides sitespecific evidence...

Fire is increasingly applied as a land management tool toward achieving multiple objectives in eastern North American oak (Quercus) communities. Prescribed fire treatments are applied for natural community restoration, hazardous fuel reduction, and multiple silvicultural objectives (Arthur and others 2012, Brose and others 2013, Brose and Van Lear 1998, Burton and others 2011, Dey and Hartman 2005, Pyne and others 1996). In southern Missouri, prescribed fire is used to restore glades, savannas, and woodlands by decreasing the number of woody stems, consuming litter, and creating forest...