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Tiny insects called bark beetles have devastated forests in western North America over the past decade. Life has drained from millions of hectares of forest so quickly that it seemed as if they had been abruptly unplugged, like a Christmas tree…
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Prior to fire suppression and exclusion, wildfires and other disturbances (e.g., insects, disease, and weather) sustained ecosystem processes in many landscapes of the Western United States. However, wildfires have been increasing in size, frequency…
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Increasingly, forest management goals include building or maintaining resistance and/or resilience to disturbances in the face of climate change. Although a multitude of descriptive definitions for resistance and resilience exist, to evaluate…
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Wildland fire affects both public and private resources throughout the United States. A century of fire suppression has contributed to changing ecological conditions and accumulated fuel loads. Managers have used a variety of approaches to address…
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This study investigates the extent of the rain-snow transition zone across the complex terrain of the western United States for both late 20th century climate and projected changes in climate by the mid-21st century. Observed and projected…
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The invasive annual grass Bromus tectorum (cheatgrass) forms a positive feedback with fire in some areas of western North America's sagebrush biome by increasing fire frequency and size, which then increases B. tectorum abundance post-fire and…
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Most wildfires occur during summer in the northern hemisphere, the area burned annually is increasing, and fire effects during this season are least understood. Understanding plant response to grazing following summer fire is required to reduce…
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Fire-prone landscapes are not well studied as coupled human and natural systems (CHANS) and present many challenges for understanding and promoting adaptive behaviors and institutions. Here, we explore how heterogeneity, feedbacks, and external…
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Mega-fires can adversely impact air quality in the United States and the impacts are likely to become more serious in the future due to the possibility of more frequent and intense mega-fires in response to the projected climate change. This study…
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When the federal agencies established policies in the late 1960s and early 1970s to allow the use of natural fires in wilderness, they launched a natural fire management experiment in a handful of wilderness areas. As a result, wildland fire has…
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Exposed mineral soil is an immediate result of forest fires with direct relevance on surface runoff and soil erosion. The goal of this study was to determine which topographic features influence the distribution of exposed mineral soil following…
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Several mechanical approaches to managing vegetation fuels hold promise when applied to the dry mixed conifer forests in the western United States. These are most useful to treat surface, ladder, and crown fuels. There are a variety of techniques to…
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While the paleoclimatic record is based on indirect measurements—for example, biological and geological indicators—more recent climate history is defined largely by in situ observations over the last 100–150 years. This chapter centers on what these…
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Purple threeawn (Aristida purpurea Nutt.) is a native perennial bunchgrass with limited forage value that dominates sites with disturbed soils and persists with repeated severe grazing. Fire and nitrogen addition have been used to reduce threeawn…
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Comprehensive assessment of ecological change after fires have burned forests and rangelands is important if we are to understand, predict and measure fire effects. We highlight the challenges in effective assessment of fire and burn severity in the…
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The ecological effects of forest fires burning with high severity are long-lived and have the greatest impact on vegetation successional trajectories, as compared to low-to-moderate severity fires. The primary drivers of high severity fire are…
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Rainfall on 9–13 September 2013 triggered at least 1,138 debris flows in a 3430 km2 area of the Colorado Front Range. The historical record reveals that the occurrence of these flows over such a large area in the interior of North America is highly…
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Mick Harrington and Steve Arno, retired research foresters with the USFS Rocky Mountain Research Station, took participants of the May 2014 Large Wildland Fires Conference through a 300-year-old stand of ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) and western…
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My first experience fighting a wildfire came in 1962; the same year naturalist Rachael Carson published Silent Spring, the book that jolted me and other Americans into awareness of ecological relationships and how important they are to life on earth…
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This volume offers a scientific assessment of the effects of climatic variability and change on forest resources in the United States. Derived from a report that provides technical input to the 2013 U.S. Global Change Research Program National…
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