Forest Sciences Commons^™

A Wildfire Risk Assessment Framework For Land And Resource Management, Joe H. Scott, Matthew P. Thompson, David E. Calkin

USDA Forest Service / UNL Faculty Publications

Wildfires can result in significant, long-lasting impacts to ecological, social, and economic systems. It is necessary, therefore, to identify and understand the risks posed by wildland fire, and to develop cost-effective mitigation strategies accordingly. This report presents a general framework with which to assess wildfire risk and explore mitigation options, and illustrates a process for implementing the framework. Two key strengths of the framework are its flexibility— allowing for a multitude of data sources, modeling techniques, and approaches to measuring risk—and its scalability, with potential application for project, forest, regional, and national planning. The specific risk assessment process we introduce …

Refining Thresholds In Coupled Fire–Vegetation Models To Improve Management Of Encroaching Woody Plants In Grasslands, Dirac L. Twidwell Jr, Samuel D. Fuhlendorf, Charles A. Taylor Jr, William E. Rogers

Department of Agronomy and Horticulture: Faculty Publications

1. Restoration priorities are typically established without quantitative information on how to overcome the thresholds that preclude successful restoration of desirable ecosystem properties and services. We seek to demonstrate that quantifying ecological thresholds and incorporating them into management-oriented frameworks provide a more comprehensive perspective on how the threshold concept can be applied to achieve restoration goals.

2. As an example, restoration actions have been largely unsuccessful when based on prevailing ecological knowledge of fire-based thresholds in nonresprouting Juniperus woodland. We build on previous threshold-based research and link well-established models from applied fire physics with a widely applied ecological positive feedback …

Ecological Effects Of Prescribed Fire Season: A Literature Review And Synthesis For Managers, Eric Knapp, Becky Estes, Carl N. Skinner

JFSP Research Project Reports

Prescribed burning may be conducted at times of the year when fires were infrequent historically, leading to concerns about potential adverse effects on vegetation and wildlife. Historical and prescribed fire regimes for different regions in the continental United States were compared and literature on season of prescribed burning synthesized. In regions and vegetation types where considerable differences in fuel consumption exist among burning seasons, the effects of prescribed fire season appears, for many ecological variables, to be driven more by fire-intensity differences among seasons than by phenology or growth stage of organisms at the time of fire. Where fuel consumption …

Ecological Effects Of Prescribed Fire Season: A Literature Review And Synthesis For Managers, Eric E. Knapp, Becky L. Estes, Carl N. Skinner

Joint Fire Science Program Synthesis Reports

Prescribed burning may be conducted at times of the year when fires were infrequent historically, leading to concerns about potential adverse effects on vegetation and wildlife. Historical and prescribed fire regimes for different regions in the continental United States were compared and literature on season of prescribed burning synthesized. In regions and vegetation types where considerable differences in fuel consumption exist among burning seasons, the effects of prescribed fire season appears, for many ecological variables, to be driven more by fire-intensity differences among seasons than by phenology or growth stage of organisms at the time of fire. Where fuel consumption …