JFSP Fire Science Exchange Network
A study published in Ecology Letters suggests that the effects of drought and fire work in combination, such that forests experiencing drought will see more dead trees in the aftermath of wildfires.
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The author examines social perceptions of risk of home ignition in the community of Forest Ranch, which is located in the Sierra-Cascade foothills near Chico in Butte County.
Read MoreThese authors utilized annual fire data from the early 20th century to 2010 to evaluate historical changes in fires and the extent to which annual variations in climate were correlated with fires.
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This study focuses on reducing fire ignition, specifically on discerning the most destructive ignition sources so that they might be targeted by managers.
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A 2015 study by Meyer showed that the natural range of variation (NRV) concept and key fire severity indicators could be used to quantitatively evaluate the landscape-scale effects of large wildfires managed for resource objectives.
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The authors evaluated current USFS standards and guidelines, input from forest management practitioners, and geospatial data to develop a hierarchy of biological (i.e., nonproductive forest), legal (i.e., wilderness), operational (i.e., equipment access), and administrative (i.e., sensitive species and riparian areas) constraints on mechanical treatments.
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This 1952 study is a questionably designed attempt to measure wildlife survival during prescribed fire. The most dubious part of the project involves burying live-‐trapped animals in the path of a controlled burn.
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Presented here is scientific information regarding wildland fire and nonnative invasive plant species, identifies the nonnative invasive species currently of greatest concern in major bioregions of the United States, and describes emerging fire-invasive issues in each bioregion and throughout the nation.
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The authors used spatial analyses to describe major wildfire patterns across a 5.8 million acre area of northwestern California.
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California leads the nation in fire losses and the explanation for this is that with more than 33 million people, California has a fire regime that is dominated by human ignitions.
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This study investigated internal and external influences on fire management through case studies of two wildfires in the summer of 2008.
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This review article summarizes the biological risks to chaparral species depending on fire return interval.
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This study examined the historical fire intervals of two chaparral-dominated divisions of the Los Padres National Forest, California.
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This 2003 study used aerial photos taken between 1939 and 1997 to quantify vegetation change in the landscape mosaic of grasslands, shrublands, woodlands and forests of the San Francisco Bay Area.
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This brief discussed a 2012 study that indicates less than 20% of national forest and national park lands in the Sierra Nevada are experiencing fuels treatments needed to mitigate continuing degradation from either the lack of fire or wildfire burning at high severity.
Read MoreThis brief summarizes the current state of knowledge on the use of fire as a tool to manage invasive plants in wildlands. The authors of two publications discuss risks and challenges of conducting prescribed burns, types of systems and circumstances in which burning may be effective for the management of invasive plants, complexities of fire and plant community interactions, impacts of prescribed burning on the broader plant community and the soil, and comprehensive monitoring plans.
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Read MoreChaparral and coastal sage scrub have a higher number of rare and endangered plants in their communities than expected based on total land area occupied by these two shrubland types.
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Between the 1940s and the 1970s, converting chaparral to grasslands had become acceptable and widely practiced in western states. How these type conversions affected vertebrate diversity were addressed in this study.
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The soil characteristics and historical records of the Blue Canyon brush field were reviewed.
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In the interest of increasing browse for deer populations on California chaparral lands, a brush manipulation program was conducted by the California Department of Fish & Game (CDFG) from 1955 to 1960. The results of this project are discussed in this brief.
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The California Fire Science Consortium is divided into 4 geographic regions and 1 wildland-urban interface (WUI) team. Statewide coordination of this program is based at UC Berkeley.
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This regional Fire Science Exchange is one of 15 regional fire science exchanges sponsored by Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP).
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