Digital Commons Network^™

Rapid Bacterial And Fungal Successional Dynamics In First Year After Chaparral Wildfire, M. Fabiola Pulido-Chavez, James W. J. Randolph, Cassandra A. Zalman, Loralee Larios, Peter M. Homyak, Sydney I. Glassman

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Articles and Research

The rise in wildfire frequency and severity across the globe has increased interest in secondary succession. However, despite the role of soil microbial communities in controlling biogeochemical cycling and their role in the regeneration of post-fire vegetation, the lack of measurements immediately post-fire and at high temporal resolution has limited understanding of microbial secondary succession. To fill this knowledge gap, we sampled soils at 17, 25, 34, 67, 95, 131, 187, 286, and 376 days after a southern California wildfire in fire-adapted chaparral shrublands. We assessed bacterial and fungal biomass with qPCR of 16S and 18S and richness and composition …

Crisisready's Novel Framework For Transdisciplinary Translation: Case-Studies In Wildfire And Hurricane Response, Andrew Schroeder, Caleb Dresser, Akash Yadav, Jennifer Chan, Shenyue Jia, Caroline Buckee, Satchit Balsari

Institute for ECHO Articles and Research

Extreme weather events including wildfires and hurricanes are becoming increasingly hazardous due to climate change, and often result in transient or permanent population displacements. Disaster-related disruptions in infrastructure, workforce, wages, and social networks can combine with population displacements to result in interruptions in health care access and prolonged impacts on morbidity and mortality. The data needed to make health systems and emergency management approaches more resilient to these hazards, and more responsive to the needs of affected populations, are sequestered in silos across private corporations and public agencies. In two case studies, we describe how our research team at CrisisReady …

Wildfire Smoke Exposure In California: Public Health Impacts And Mitigation Strategies, Jiaxi Hou

Master's Projects and Capstones

Climate change projections show that wildfires are becoming more severe and frequent over the next few decades. In California, as a leader in environmental protection and resilience planning, there are still concerns about the impacts of wildfire. Several places such as Napa Valley, Los Angeles forests, and Yosemite National Park have been exposed to long-lasting wildfire damage. Wildfire smoke contains toxic pollutants such as particulate matter 2.5 (PM_2.5) that can cause negative health impacts on the public. It has been proved that these public health impacts are cumulative, and wildfire PM_2.5 can exacerbate pre-existing conditions. Therefore, there …

Wildfires Enhance Phytoplankton Production In Tropical Oceans, Dongyan Liu, Chongran Zhou, John K. Keesing, Oscar Serrano, Axel Werner, Yin Fang, Yingjun Chen, Pere Masque, Janine Kinloch, Aleksey Sadekov, Yan Du

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Wildfire magnitude and frequency have greatly escalated on a global scale. Wildfire products rich in biogenic elements can enter the ocean through atmospheric and river inputs, but their contribution to marine phytoplankton production is poorly understood. Here, using geochemical paleo-reconstructions, a century-long relationship between wildfire magnitude and marine phytoplankton production is established in a fire-prone region of Kimberley coast, Australia. A positive correlation is identified between wildfire and phytoplankton production on a decadal scale. The importance of wildfire on marine phytoplankton production is statistically higher than that of tropical cyclones and rainfall, when strong El Niño Southern Oscillation coincides with …

Multi‐Scale Effects Of Land Cover, Weather, And Fire On Columbian Sharp‐Tailed Grouse, Bryan S. Stevens, Courtney J. Conway, Jeffrey M. Knetter, Shane B. Roberts, Patrick Donnelly

United States Fish and Wildlife: Staff Publications

Columbian sharp‐tailed grouse (Tympanuchus phasianellus columbianus) are endemic to grassland and shrub‐steppe ecosystems of western North America, yet their distribution has contracted to <10% of their historical range. Primary threats to Columbian sharp‐tailed grouse include loss of native habitat and conversion to agriculture, reductions in habitat once provided by the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), wildfire, and drought conditions, yet population‐level consequences of these threats and their spatio‐temporal scales of effect are poorly understood. We evaluated multi‐scale effects of land cover, weather, and fire histories on patterns of abundance and productivity for Columbian sharp‐tailed grouse populations during 1995–2020 in Idaho, USA, using mixedeffects generalized regression and remotely sensed data. We demonstrated negative effects of fire, tree encroachment, and bare ground, positive effects of spring and summer precipitation and cover of shrubs and perennial forbs and grasses, and positive effects of CRP on grouse abundance that changed in magnitude with cover of perennials and shrubs near leks (i.e., strongest effects when average cover of shrubs and perennial forbs and grasses were less abundant). We also demonstrated per capita recruitment of Columbian sharp‐tailed grouse is positively associated with late‐summer greenness. Our results show that several suspected threats have measurable, population‐level impacts to Columbian sharp‐tailed grouse within Idaho. Moreover, our results suggest ongoing changes occurring within the core range of Columbian sharp‐tailed grouse, including loss of CRP cover to tilled agriculture and changes to wildfire and precipitation dynamics are likely to have negative effects on populations.

A Century Of Drought In HawaiʻI: Geospatial Analysis And Synthesis Across Hydrological, Ecological, And Socioeconomic Scales, Abby G. Frazier, Christian P. Giardina, Thomas W. Giambelluca, Laura Brewington, Yi Leng Chen, Pao Shin Chu, Lucas Berio Fortini, Danielle Hall, David A. Helweg, Victoria W. Keener, Ryan J. Longman, Matthew P. Lucas, Alan Mair, Delwyn S. Oki, Julian J. Reyes, Stephanie G. Yelenik, Clay Trauernicht

Geography

Drought is a prominent feature of Hawaiʻi’s climate. However, it has been over 30 years since the last comprehensive meteorological drought analysis, and recent drying trends have emphasized the need to better understand drought dynamics and multi-sector effects in Hawaiʻi. Here, we provide a comprehensive synthesis of past drought effects in Hawaiʻi that we integrate with geospatial analysis of drought characteristics using a newly developed 100-year (1920–2019) gridded Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI) dataset. The synthesis examines past droughts classified into five categories: Meteorological, agricultural, hydrological, ecological, and socioeconomic drought. Results show that drought duration and magnitude have increased significantly, consistent …

Arima-Based Forecasting Of The Effects Of Wildfire On The Increasing Tree Cover Trend And Recurrence Interval Of Woody Encroachment In Grazing Land, Mazbahul Ahamad

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Invasive tree removal from grazing lands using costly brush management practices is widely employed. However, wildfire-like natural events can prevent the increasing trend of woody tree encroachment in grazing lands at no cost, instead of cost-oriented prescribed burning. This study aims to estimate the effects of wildfire in 2002 on woody tree encroachment trends during the post-wildfire period (2003–20), as well as the recurrence interval of the encroachment of a wildfire site in the United States. An autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model was employed to forecast the tree cover during the post-wildfire period. We found that the pre-wildfire tree …

Avian Abundance And Diversity On Knoxville Wildlife Area In California Following The County Fire Of 2018, Katherine S. Miller, Stacy Martinelli, Levi E. Souza

National Quail Symposium Proceedings

Wildfires can have negative impacts on wildlife during and immediately after a burn event, yet these fires are also necessary for plant succession and biodiversity. Knoxville Wildlife Area (KWA) in Napa County, California, USA is a diverse environment that contains oak woodlands, chaparral, grasslands, and riparian corridors. In July 2018, the County Fire burned 36,353 ha in the Northern California Interior Coast Ranges, including 2,429 ha on KWA. California Department of Fish and Wildlife employees used this opportunity to monitor avian abundance and diversity as the burned area revegetates. From 10 June through 14 June 2019, we began a pilot …

Wildfire Detection And Prevention In Northern Minnesota, Kellian Clink

Library Services Publications

“It was timber, not farmland, that first attracted European settler-colonists to Minnesota. On early maps of the region, the little-known northlands were marked simply “Abundant Pine.” Not the trees but the products that could be built from them, buildings, boats, civilization were the motivation for those who had already exploited eastern forests to move on to Minnesota. (Logging Industry, n.d.) Most Minnesotans would be familiar with the Hinckley Fire -- in just four hours on September 1, 1894, destroyed an estimated 480 square miles, resulting in massive destruction and over 418 deaths. Fire detection and prevention are deeply connected to …

Modern Pyromes: Biogeographical Patterns Of Fire Characteristics Across The Contiguous United States, Megan E. Cattau, Adam Mahood, Jennifer K. Balch, Carol Wessman

Human-Environment Systems Research Center Faculty Publications and Presentations

In recent decades, wildfires in many areas of the United States (U.S.) have become larger and more frequent with increasing anthropogenic pressure, including interactions between climate, land-use change, and human ignitions. We aimed to characterize the spatiotemporal patterns of contemporary fire characteristics across the contiguous United States (CONUS). We derived fire variables based on frequency, fire radiative power (FRP), event size, burned area, and season length from satellite-derived fire products and a government records database on a 50 km grid (1984–2020). We used k-means clustering to create a hierarchical classification scheme of areas with relatively homogeneous fire characteristics, or modern …

Characterizing Wildfire In The Frank Church Wilderness, Idaho, Between 1972-2012, Abigail Christine Axness

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

I examined wildfire characteristics in the Frank Church Wilderness, central Idaho, between 1972-2012. Studying fire characteristics in the Frank Church Wilderness provides an opportunity to understand the history of wildfires in a federally designated wilderness area, largely devoid of management impacts with limited human access and activity. The ~958,000-hectare Frank Church Wilderness area encompasses the Middle Fork Salmon River. Vegetation cover ranges from high elevation (~2500-3200 meters) mixed conifer forests in the headwaters to low-elevation (~600-1000 meters) sagebrush-steppe and ponderosa pine (Pinus Ponderosa) forests. The Frank Church Wilderness is defined as unmanaged because effective fire suppression (e.g., vehicle …

Disturbance, Vegetation Co-Occurrence, And Human Intervention As Drivers Of Plant Species Distributions In The Sagebrush Steppe, Fiona Claire Schaus Noonan

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Changes in fire regimes, invasive species dynamics, human land use, and drought conditions have shifted important plant species in the Northern Great Basin (NGB)—including big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp.), conifers (e.g., Juniperus spp.) and invasive annual grasses (e.g., Bromus tectorum). Characterizing how these overlapping disturbances influence species distributions is critical for land management decision-making. Previous research has explored the individual effects of drought, wildfire, restoration, and invasive species on sagebrush steppe communities, but the specific effects of these disturbances in context with one another remain poorly understood at a landscape scale. To address this …

Highly Variable Rainfall-Runoff Patterns Across Burned Mountainous Watersheds In The Colorado River Headwaters, Haley Anne Canham

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Wildfires can contribute to enhanced flooding, erosion, debris flows, sediment transport, and water quality changes that impact downstream infrastructure, water users, and aquatic habitat. With increasing wildfire risk in the western U.S. due to a changing climate, understanding post-wildfire rainfall-runoff patterns and controls is critical for continued water resources security. To improve understanding of post-wildfire rainfall-runoff patterns and controls, we developed a transparent, repeatable analysis framework to collect precipitation and streamflow data, identify paired rainfall-runoff events, and analyze these events to evaluate post-wildfire rainfall-runoff patterns and controls. To automate the rainfall-runoff event identification, the Rainfall-Runoff Event Detection and Identification (RREDI) …

Evaluation Of Energy Release From Wildfires Across The Elevation Gradient, Isabelle Rose Butler

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Wildfires are an integral process in vegetative terrestrial land which shape ecosystem functions. A warming climate, however, has increased the size and severity of fires with significant ecosystem and societal implications. Furthermore, warming has changed characteristics of wildfires enabling a median upslope advance of 252 m in high-elevation forest fires from 1984 to 2017, allowing wildfires to burn in areas that were previously too wet to burn frequently. This exposed an additional 81,500 square kilometers (11%) of western US montane forests to fires.

In this thesis, I test the hypothesis that wildfires burn more intensely in high-elevation mesic forests than …

Topo-Climatic Effects Of Fuel Loading In Ponderosa Pine (Pinus Ponderosa) Forests Of The Colorado Rocky Mountains, Justin Yow

Master's Theses

A key restoration focus is the mitigation and prevention of intense wildfires. This is done using a regularly prescribed fire regime and forest thinning practices to reduce surface fuel loads. Prediction of fuel loads at the forest floor is pivotal when assessing the hazard level a forest fire may present. Scientists already have much data correlating fuel characteristics to fire effects and behavior. However, links between montane climate variability and relative effects on fuel load characteristics have not been extensively explored in the Front Range and southwestern Colorado. This study system was uniquely located along a North-South monsoonal gradient and …

Interannual Variation In Climate Contributes To Contingency In Post-Fire Restoration Outcomes In Seeded Sagebrush Steppe, Allison B. Simler-Williamson, Cara Applestein, Matthew J. Germino

Biology Faculty Publications and Presentations

Interannual variation, especially weather, is an often-cited reason for restoration “failures”; yet its importance is difficult to experimentally isolate across broad spatiotemporal extents, due to correlations between weather and site characteristics. We examined post-fire treatments within sagebrush-steppe ecosystems to ask: (1) Is weather following seeding efforts a primary reason why restoration outcomes depart from predictions? and (2) Does the management-relevance of weather differ across space and with time since treatment? Our analysis quantified range-wide patterns of sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) recovery, by integrating long-term records of restoration and annual vegetation cover estimates from satellite imagery following thousands of post-fire seeding …

Wildfire Risk Assessment Using Convolutional Neural Networks And Modis Climate Data, Sean F. Nesbit

Master's Theses

Wildfires burn millions of acres of land each year leading to the destruction of homes and wildland ecosystems while costing governments billions in funding. As climate change intensifies drought volatility across the Western United States, wildfires are likely to become increasingly severe. Wildfire risk assessment and hazard maps are currently employed by fire services, but can often be outdated. This paper introduces an image-based dataset using climate and wildfire data from NASA’s Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS). The dataset consists of 32 climate and topographical layers captured across 0.1 deg by 0.1 deg tiled regions in California and Nevada between …

Assessing The Efficacy Of California’S Wildfire And Forest Resilience Action Plan, Chloe Nelson

Master's Projects and Capstones

California’s wildfire threat eclipses current forestry management and wildfire mitigation strategies in place to protect people, infrastructure, and the natural environment. Climate change escalates wildfire risks with declining water supply coupled with hotter, drier conditions. California’s Wildfire and Forest Resilience Action Plan attempts to integrate and build upon previously successful wildfire resilience plans to amplify the scale and pace of the state’s land management and community protections. This research assesses the plan’s efficacy to respond to the growing wildfire threat. This study investigates if there is equitable planning for the needs of high-wildfire risk groups living in the WUI and …

Social Capital And Cross-Boundary Collaboration In Wyoming Wildfire Management Networks, Hannah L. Spencer, Christian Heisler

Student Research Symposium

Wildfire hotspots often intersect jurisdictional boundaries, so protecting human communities and restoring healthy fire regimes will require collaborative, cross-boundary action from fire managers. However, collaboration between fire management groups can have varied outcomes depending on the actors involved, all with different missions, financial obligations, and cultures. One way to conceptualize the interactions between actors is with the idea of social capital. We will investigate the following research question: how does social capital impact cross-boundary collaboration in wildfire management networks? We will survey wildfire managers in northwestern Wyoming about their collaborative actions using a snowball sampling method. Using Social Network Analysis …

Development Of An Instructional Course On Fire-Protective And Low-Water Landscaping In Utah, Jordan Goff

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Because of climate change, population expansion, and other factors, both wildfire and drought are becoming pressing concerns in Utah. Home landscaping can reduce risk of damage from wildfire (fire-protective landscaping) and contribute to lower water use (low-water landscaping). While it is important for homes in the wildland-urban interface in Utah to have landscaping that is both fire-protective and low-water, best practices for the two are often taught in ways that make them seem mutually exclusive. This project used existing research and best practices to develop a learning experience to teach homeowners how to implement landscaping that is both fire-protective and …

Integrating Fire Responses To Combat Wildfires, Jonathan Leonard Badal

Electrical Engineering

Each year wildfires cause significant loss of property, worsen people’s health, and destroy multiple ecosystems. On average, a wildfire season costs anywhere from 7.6-62.8 billion dollars due to fire containment, repair, and restoration [1]. It can take decades to recover from the crippling loss of land and take even longer to fully restore it. However, with the implementation of a robust early detection system, these losses can be significantly reduced. The current process for identifying wildfires involves visual identification, phone call alerts, and media tools primarily driven by park rangers and public reporting. Unfortunately, this system is not preventative and …

High Spatial And Temporal Resolution Census Data Reveal Communities At Risk Along The Wildland-Urban Interface (Wui) In California, Usa, Shenyue Jia, Slade Lazeweski, Jessica E. Viner, Wesley Ho, Brian Hoover

Institute for ECHO Articles and Research

We tracked census tract level population change along California's wild land-urban interface (WUI) during the past decade (2010-2019), an ecological sensitive region transitioning from developed land to wilderness. Our results from Mann-Kendall analysis, a method employed for monotonic trend detection showed that about one-third (29.1%) of census tracts in California’s WUI have seen a significant population increase from 2010 to 2019, affecting 12.7% population in California. The population increase along WUI is largely driven by the sixteen counties in the San Francisco Bay Area (10) and Southern California (6). We also found that higher proportion of WUI residents in Bay …

Predicting The Likelihood And Scale Of Wildfires In California Using Meteorological And Vegetation Data, Matthew Walters

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Wildfires have devastating ecological, environmental, economical, and public health impacts through the deterioration of water and air quality, CO2 emissions, property damage, and lung illnesses. The early detection and prevention of wildfires allow for the minimization of these risks. The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in wildfire detection and prediction has been highly researched as a tool to assist firefighters in stopping wildfires in its early stages. The three common wildfire prediction categories include image and video detection, behavior prediction, and susceptibility prediction. Data such as climate, weather, vegetation, satellite images, and historical wildfire data is most commonly used. Many …

High Spatial And Temporal Resolution Census Data Reveals Communities At Risk Along The Wildland-Urban Interface (Wui) In California, Usa, Jessica E. Viner, Slade T. Laszewski, Wesley Ho, Justin Ewoldt, Pionnah Gregorio, Liz Lyon, Brian Hoover, Shenyue Jia

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science Faculty Articles and Research

We tracked census tract level population change along California's wild land-urban interface (WUI) during the past decade (2010-2019), an ecological sensitive region transitioning from developed land to wilderness. Our results from Mann-Kendall analysis, a method employed for monotonic trend detection showed that about one-third (29.1%) of census tracts in California’s WUI have seen a significant population increase from 2010 to 2019, affecting 12.7% population in California.

The population increase along WUI is largely driven by the sixteen counties in the San Francisco Bay Area (10) and Southern California (6). We also found that higher proportion of WUI residents in Bay …

Bottom-Up Drivers Of Future Fire Regimes In Western Boreal North America, Adrianna C. Foster, Jacquelyn K. Shuman, Brendan M. Rogers, Xanthe J. Walker, Michelle C. Mack, Laura Bourgeau-Chavez, Sander Veraverbeke, Scott J. Goetz

Michigan Tech Publications

Forest characteristics, structure, and dynamics within the North American boreal region are heavily influenced by wildfire intensity, severity, and frequency. Increasing temperatures are likely to result in drier conditions and longer fire seasons, potentially leading to more intense and frequent fires. However, an increase in deciduous forest cover is also predicted across the region, potentially decreasing flammability. In this study, we use an individual tree-based forest model to test bottom-up (i.e. fuels) vs top-down (i.e. climate) controls on fire activity and project future forest and wildfire dynamics. The University of Virginia Forest Model Enhanced is an individual tree-based forest model …

Bottom-Up Drivers Of Future Fire Regimes In Western Boreal North America, Adrianna C. Foster, Jacquelyn K. Shuman, Brendan M. Rogers, Xanthe J. Walker, Michelle C. Mack, Laura L. Bourgeau-Chavez, Sander Veraverbeke, Scott J. Goetz

Aspen Bibliography

Forest characteristics, structure, and dynamics within the North American boreal region are heavily influenced by wildfire intensity, severity, and frequency. Increasing temperatures are likely to result in drier conditions and longer fire seasons, potentially leading to more intense and frequent fires. However, an increase in deciduous forest cover is also predicted across the region, potentially decreasing flammability. In this study, we use an individual tree-based forest model to test bottom-up (i.e. fuels) vs top-down (i.e. climate) controls on fire activity and project future forest and wildfire dynamics. The University of Virginia Forest Model Enhanced is an individual tree-based forest model …

Effects Of Wildfire On Collaborative Governance Of Rangelands - A Case Study Of The 2015 Soda Fire, Gwendwr Rhiannon Meredith, M. W. Brunson

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Targeted Grazing And Mechanical Thinning Enhance Forest Stand Resilience Under A Narrow Range Of Wildfire Scenarios, V. M. Donovan, C. P. Roberts, D. T. Fogarty, David A. Wedin, D. Twidwell

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Sunbaby, Katelyn Eva Garcia

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Above all else, Sunbaby is a project concerned with that which is passed down from a mother to her daughters. Less interested in writing into the center of violent acts, this series of poems aims instead to consider all the things – both physical and psychological – that exist of the edges of violence. What happens to a body in the wake of violent acts? What informs the trauma of families? These are questions Sunbaby asks its reader to grapple with.

Set to background of the desert and mountain West, Sunbaby lingers on bodies (human and other) subjected to environmental …

Ecological Effects Of Prescribed Burning, Mechanical Cutting, And Post-Treatment Wildfire For Restoration Of Pinus Albicaulis, Enzo Paolo Martelli Moya

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

The field of ecological restoration is growing rapidly, increasing the need for reliable and generalizable information on the impacts of management interventions aimed to be restorative. Prescribed burning and mechanical cutting have been proposed as primary strategies for restoration. However, there is limited information on their efficacy and effects in subalpine forest types, suggesting that monitoring to inform adaptive management is a priority need. I used data from a 15-year, replicated before-after-control-impact (BACI) study on Pinus albicaulis (whitebark pine) restoration to assess the ecological effects of prescribed burning and mechanical cutting, with and without subsequent unplanned wildfire, as well as …