Treesearch

The Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) is an ecologically important region of the Indian subcontinent, where anthropogenic habitat loss and forest fragmentation are major issues. The most prominent threat is forest fires because of their impacts on the microhabitat and macrohabitat characteristics and the resulting disruption of ecological processes. Moreover, wildfire aggravates conflicts between humans and wildlife in the forest fringe areas. The lack of a proper forest fire monitoring system in the TAL is a major management issue that needs attention for long-term forest viability. Hence, the...

Spatial wildfire risk assessments that account for both the probability and consequences of wildfire events are becoming an important element of strategic wildland fire and fuels planning (Calkin et al. 2011; Finney 2005; Gilbertson-Day et al. 2017, 2018; Thompson et al. 2013, 2016a). Using a standardized framework (Scott et al. 2013), these assessments can be scaled from local communities up to the continental scale. Inputs, spatial resolution, and methodology considerations change with different assessment scales, as do the types of questions that can be addressed with the results. The...

The 2020 edition of the UNECE/FAO Forest Products Annual Market Review provides a statistical review of market developments in the UNECE region in 2019 and the first half of 2020 and the policies driving those developments. This year, the Review also includes forecasts for 2020 and 2021. The UNECE region has three subregions: Europe; EECCA; and North America. It encompasses about 1.7 billion ha of forest, which is more than 40% of the world’s total forest area. This chapter acts as an executive summary and provides a policy and economic background for the subsequent product-oriented...

Research conducted via the Australian Bushfire Cooperative Research Centre (BCRC) developed methods for assessing postfire hydrologic risk to human life, infrastructure, and water quality. End users of BCRC products identified the project for utilization, and a small team of practitioners and researchers was established. The utilization team developed a three-phase plan. Phase one was an Australia-wide assessment of postfire hydrologic risk and the development of national guidelines based on general principles. Phase two was the application of the national risk guidelines to the water...

Prescribed burning is an essential tool for the management of fire. Burns can be complex and involve many variables that pose high levels of risk. Fire planners develop detailed plans to minimize risk, but risk will never be completely eliminated. Burn escapes and shrinking burn windows due to climate change have highlighted the need for a standardized tool to deal with the risks associated with prescribed burning. The Prescribed Burn Decision Support Tool (PB DST) is a risk assessment tool that assists practitioners in recognizing and documenting the risks associated with a prescribed...

In the 28-year period from 1990 to 2017, there were 41 incidents in the United States where firefighter burnover fatalities occurred on wildland fires. Ninety-six fatalities and 78 injuries were reported, with an average of 1.5 incidents and 3.4 fatalities per year. The great majority (76 percent) of fatalities occurred in mountainous terrain, where the most common situation was that fire personnel became trapped while working upslope or upcanyon from the fire when the fire made a sudden upslope run. The information for my report came primarily from serious accident investigations of...

A prescribed burn for western juniper (Juniperus occidentalis) reduction at Crooked River National Grassland in Oregon was conducted in 2011. Foliar cover by species or genus and functional group was measured every other year for 6 years to evaluate response to four treatments: unburned control, burned, burned-plus-nativeseeding, and burned-plus-cultivar seeding. Additional measurements focused on expansion of medusahead (Taeniatherum caput-medusae) from localized patches and vegetative response to postburn grazing.

Fire is a natural environmental parameter on which the diversity of life depends. In the United States we are now engaged in sorting all remaining lands not already transformed from nature into two distinct categories of conservation. First are the lands we are committed to protect: National forests, national parks, wildlife refuges, wilderness, and other public lands, and private preserves. Second are the working landscapes found in ranches, small farms, and their woodlands, and some commercial timberlands. From the perspective of the planet, the most significant corollary of climate...

Support Vector Machines (SVM) and k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN) are two common machine learning algorithms. Used for classifying images, the kNN and SVM each have strengths and weaknesses. When classifying an image, the SVM creates a hyperplane, dividing the input space between classes and classifying based upon which side of the hyperplane an unclassified object lands when placed in the input space. The kNN uses a system of voting to determine which class an unclassified object belongs to, considering the class of the nearest neighbors in the decision space. The SVM is extremely fast, classifyi...

Studies on frequent fire return intervals often span a few years and historically it has been presumed that this is sufficient to assess fire effects in different seasons and/ or frequencies. However, long-term data increasingly challenges this assumption. Our research targets an ecosystem dominated by the fire-dependent longleaf pine (Pinus palustris). Longleaf pine forests once dominated Southeastern United States uplands and it is well-accepted that the ecosystem was maintained by frequent fire. Nevertheless, important questions remain, including how frequent is frequent enough and how...