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Full-Text Articles in Forest Management

Exploring And Testing Wildfire Risk Decision-Making In The Face Of Deep Uncertainty, Bart R. Johnson, Alan A. Ager, Cody Evers, David Hulse, Max Nielsen-Pincus, John P. Bolte Aug 2023

Exploring And Testing Wildfire Risk Decision-Making In The Face Of Deep Uncertainty, Bart R. Johnson, Alan A. Ager, Cody Evers, David Hulse, Max Nielsen-Pincus, John P. Bolte

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

We integrated a mechanistic wildfire simulation system with an agent-based landscape change model to investigate the feedbacks among climate change, population growth, development, landowner decision-making, vegetative succession, and wildfire. Our goal was to develop an adaptable simulation platform for anticipating risk-mitigation tradeoffs in a fire-prone wildland– urban interface (WUI) facing conditions outside the bounds of experience. We describe how five social and ecological system (SES) submodels interact over time and space to generate highly variable alternative futures even within the same scenario as stochastic elements in simulated wildfire, succession, and landowner decisions create large sets of unique, path-dependent futures for …


Fire And Land Cover Change In The Palouse Prairie–Forest Ecotone, Washington And Idaho, Usa, Penelope Morgan, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Eva K. Strand, Stephen C. Bunting, James P. Riser Ii, John T. Abatzoglou, Max Nielsen-Pincus, Mara Johnson Jan 2020

Fire And Land Cover Change In The Palouse Prairie–Forest Ecotone, Washington And Idaho, Usa, Penelope Morgan, Emily K. Heyerdahl, Eva K. Strand, Stephen C. Bunting, James P. Riser Ii, John T. Abatzoglou, Max Nielsen-Pincus, Mara Johnson

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Background: Prairie–forest ecotones are ecologically important for biodiversity and ecological processes. While these ecotones cover small areas, their sharp gradients in land cover promote rich ecological interaction and high conservation value. Our objective was to understand how historical and current fire occurrences and human development influenced the Palouse Prairie–forest ecotone. We used General Land Office survey field notes about the occurrence of bearing trees to locate historical (1870s to 1880s) prairie, pine savanna, and forest at the eastern edge of the bioregion. We combined LANDFIRE Existing Vegetation classes to contrast historical land cover with current land cover. We reconstructed …


Wildland Fire Reburning Trends Across The Us West Suggest Only Short-Term Negative Feedback And Differing Climatic Effects, Brian Buma, Shelby A. Weiss, K. Hayes, Melissa S. Lucash Jan 2020

Wildland Fire Reburning Trends Across The Us West Suggest Only Short-Term Negative Feedback And Differing Climatic Effects, Brian Buma, Shelby A. Weiss, K. Hayes, Melissa S. Lucash

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Wildfires are a significant agent of disturbance in forests and highly sensitive to climate change. Short-interval fires and high severity (mortality-causing) fires in particular, may catalyze rapid and substantial ecosystem shifts by eliminating woody species and triggering conversions from forest to shrub or grassland ecosystems. Modeling and fine-scale observations suggest negative feedbacks between fire and fuels should limit reburn prevalence as overall fire frequency rises. However, while we have good information on reburning patterns for individual fires or small regions, the validity of scaling these conclusions to broad regions like the US West remains unknown. Both the prevalence of reburning …


Social Vulnerability To Large Wildfires In The Western Usa, Palaiologos Palaiologou, Alan A. Ager, Max Nielsen-Pincus, Cody Evers, Michelle A. Day Sep 2019

Social Vulnerability To Large Wildfires In The Western Usa, Palaiologos Palaiologou, Alan A. Ager, Max Nielsen-Pincus, Cody Evers, Michelle A. Day

Environmental Science and Management Faculty Publications and Presentations

Federal land managers in the US can be informed with quantitative assessments of the social conditions of the populations affected by wildfires originating on their administered lands in order to incorporate and adapt their management strategy to achieve a more targeted prioritization of community wildfire protection investments. In addition, these assessments are valuable to socially vulnerable communities for quantifying their exposure to wildfires originating on adjacent land tenures. We assessed fire transmission patterns using fire behavior simulations to understand spatial variations across three diverse study areas (North-central Washington; Central California; and Northern New Mexico) to understand how different land tenures …