Social dynamics of wildfire management: Research Brief
/This paper summarized the results of 200 social science studies primarily from western North America to identify key lessons. They present 25 key research needs.
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Small Mammal Impacts on Ceanothus Seedlings: Research Brief
/Using a simple caging experiment, the researchers investigated impacts of herbivory on seedling establishment of two chaparral species after a prescribed fire.
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Simulating the Effects of Frequent Fire on Southern California Shrublands: USGS Research Brief
/The forest succession model LANDIS was modified to provide reasonable simulations of fire effects in chaparral shrublands.
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Shrubs That Recruit in the Understory of Chaparral: Research Brief
/This paper shows that unburned chaparral stands greater than 50 years old are healthy, relatively stable plant communities, not the stagnant, unnatural stands once historically thought.
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Sensitivity of Fire Successional Models to Fuels and Climate June 2012: Research Brief
/Five fire simulation models used from all over the world were compared: EMBYR, FIRESCAPE, LANDSUM, SEM-‐LAND, and LA-‐MOS(DS).
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Seasonal variations in fuel moisture from thinning: Research Brief
/The objective of this study was to investigate the influence of thinning treatments on fuel moisture and determine whether or not moisture patterns differ by treatment in mixed conifer stands in northern California.
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San Francisco East Bay Fire History, Landscape Changes: USGS Research Brief
/This paper examined the 20th century fire history of the San Francisco East Bay landscape to understand to what extent fire management activities could account for changes in landscape patterns.
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San Diego Wildfires of 2003 and 2007 Offer Lessons: USGS Research Brief
/The 2003 and the 2007 wildfires in San Diego County were remarkably similar in their causes, impacts and the human responses they elicited.
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Responses of animal abundance and diversity to forest thinning in North America: Research Brief
/In a 2011 paper, researchers examined the short-term consequences of mechanical thinning for forest animal abundance and diversity by summarizing the results of 33 studies from throughout the continent.
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Responses in Bird Communities to Wildfires in Southern California: USGS Research Brief
/This paper investigates the effects of large-scale wildfires on entire bird communities across multiple vegetation types.
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Resource Impacts Due to Frequent Fires in Shrublands: Research Brief
/This 1993 paper followed an earlier study that showed repeated fire a short intervals in chaparral could kill fire-dependent native shrubs, alter pre-fire community structure, and favor alien annual grasses and forbs.
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Resistance to invasives and altered fire regimes differs between cold and hot desert shrublands: USGS Research Brief
/An article provides an overview of key factors, concepts and tools to understand the ecological resistance to biological invasion and resilience to fire of desert shrublands of North America.
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Raking surface fuels can lower sugar pine mortality: Research Brief
/In a study of three prescribed fires in a mixed-‐ conifer forest at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, researchers found that the predicted probability of sugar pine survival was 60% for raked trees compared to 7% for un-‐raked trees when the total fuel depth was greater than 30cm.
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Preventing Disaster: Home Ignitability in the WUI: Research Brief
/Through modeling, field experiments, and case studies, the author demonstrated that home ignitability is largely dependent on a structure’s exterior materials and design combined with its exposure to flames and firebrands.
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Pre-settlement and contemporary forest structures and fire regimes in the Lake Tahoe Basin: Research synthesis
/Three complementary studies reviewed here examine how forest structure and fire regimes have varied spatially and temporally in the Lake Tahoe Basin, CA and NV.
Read MorePrescribed fire: Needs and challenges in North America: Research Brief
/This paper examines the social, political, and ecological needs and challenges associated with the use of prescribed fire as a management tool in North America.
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Post-fire Shrubland Rodent Densities: Edge vs. Center: Research Brief
/This study was the first to sample early recolonization after fire at the scale of the large wildfires that account for the majority of area burned in southern California.
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Post-fire Shifts in Bishop Pine Distribution: Research Brief
/Vegetation mosaics in coastal California are dynamic. Post-‐fire shifts in plant community distributions can be explained by considering the dominant species’ life history characteristics, dispersal ability, fire severity, land use history, and site characteristics.
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Postfire Plant Demography and Functional Types (in chaparral and sagebrush plant communities): USGS Research Brief
/This study used highly detailed demographic data to investigate vegetation recovery during the first five years after fire in southern California chaparral and sage scrub.
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Post-Fire Habitat Structure Affects Small Mammals: Research Brief
/This paper explored post-fire effects on small mammals in burned chaparral ecosystems from the 2003 Cedar fire. Their results “highlight the dramatic changes in rodent community composition and species abundance caused by fire in chaparral” and that “recovery is largely driven by previously known relationships between small mammals and habitat structure”.
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