2019 June - 20 articles
The emergence of affordable unmanned aerial systems (UAS) creates new opportunities to study fire behavior and ecosystem pattern—process relationships. A rotor-wing UAS hovering above a fire provides a static, scalable sensing platform that can...
LANDFIRE (LF) National (2001) was the original product suite of the LANDFIRE program, which included Existing Vegetation Cover (EVC), Height (EVH), and Type (EVT). Subsequent refinements after feedback from data users resulted in updated products, re...
The recent mountain pine beetle outbreak affecting lodgepole pine forests in the Rocky Mountains has created a novel fire environment for wildland firefighters. This paper presents results from an examination of firefighters’ observations of fi...
Fire behavior is well-recognized as a function of fuel characteristics, but in practice the dynamics of fuels are often overlooked. Here we focus on short term changes in the fuel bed structure and fire behavior. Fire behavior and structural characte...
Poor air quality arising from prescribed and wildfire smoke emissions poses threats to human health and therefore must be taken into account for the planning and implementation of prescribed burns for reducing contemporary fuel loading and other mana...
Prescribed fire is one of the most widely advocated management practices for reducing wildfire hazard and has a long and rich tradition rooted in indigenous and local ecological knowledge. The scientific literature has repeatedly reported that prescr...
Anthropogenic climate change—combined with increased human-caused ignitions—is leading to increased wildfire frequency, carbon dioxide emissions, and refractory black carbon (rBC) aerosol emissions. This is particularly evident in the Ama...
This work presents development of an algorithm to reduce the spatial uncertainty of active fire locations within the 1 km MODerate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS Aqua and Terra) daytime detection footprint. The algorithm is developed usi...
There is evidence that forest resiliency is declining in the western US due to recent increases in both areas burned by wildfire and the number of large fires. Fire refugia may increase forest resiliency; however, for land managers to incorporate fir...
Live fuel moisture content (LFMC) is an important metric for fire danger ratings. However, there is limited understanding of the physiological control of LFMC or how it varies among co-occurring species. This is a problem for biodiverse yet fire-pron...
According to a recent survey conducted by the Fire Service and Civil Defense in Dhaka, Bangladesh, more than 400 hospitals and clinics are facing a dreadful risk of fire hazard [...]
This case study documents the aftermath of a mixed-severity prescribed fire conducted during the growing season in a young loblolly pine forest. The specific management objective involved killing a substantial proportion of the overstory trees and cr...
There is a growing recognition that the social diversity of communities at risk from wildland fire may necessitate divergent combinations of policies, programs and incentives that allow diverse populations to promote fire adapted communities (FACs)....
Improved predictions of tree species mortality and growth metrics following fires are important to assess fire impacts on forest succession, and ultimately forest growth and yield. Recent studies have shown that North American conifers exhibit a &lsq...
Prescribed fire is often used by land managers as an effective means of implementing fuel treatments to achieve a variety of goals. Smoke generated from these activities can put them at odds with air quality regulations. We set out to characterize th...
16 April 2019 [...]
Firefighting remains an inherently dangerous occupation with serious injuries and fatalities reported globally. The Australasian Fire Authorities Council adopt ISO31000 as the standard of risk management for all firefighting and mitigation operations...
During a fire in enclosed spaces, having structures with a good level of resistance is very important. The post flashover fire time interval, during which rescue squads operate, is important to verify if the structure can still resist fire for an acc...
We reviewed forest management in the mountainous regions of several northwestern states and California in the United States and how it has impacted current issues facing these forests. We focused on the large-scale activities like fire suppression an...
Analysis was performed to determine whether a lightning flash could be associated with every reported lightning-initiated wildfire that grew to at least 4 km2. In total, 905 lightning-initiated wildfires within the Continental United States (CONUS) b...
