Wildland fires are an increasingly extensive, expensive, and frequent occurrence in dry forests of the western United States. Fuel reduction treatments are designed to reduce extreme fire behavior, promote resilient forest structure, and facilitate fire control efforts. Although there is widespread recognition that repeated treatments are needed to maintain desired...
Fire regimes across the western United States have been altered due to past land management and changing land use. Mitigating increased risks of wildfire occurrence in landscapes such as central Oregon requires landscape level management from both governmental and private organizations. Non-industrial private forest (NIPF) owners manage a relatively small...
Herbivory by domestic and wild ungulates can dramatically affect vegetation structure, composition and dynamics in nearly every terrestrial ecosystem of the world. These effects are of particular concern in forests of western North America, where intensive herbivory by native and domestic ungulates has the potential to substantially reduce or eliminate...
Two manuscripts are presented, each examining the potential impacts of emerging technologies on the economic feasibility of fuels reduction treatments on federal forest lands. Both manuscripts were prepared as part of the larger effort funded by the Institute for Working Forest Landscapes under the “Opportunities for biochar production to reduce...
If arid sagebrush ecosystems lack resilience to disturbances or resistance to annual invasives, then alternative successional states
dominated by annual invasives, especially cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.), are likely after fuel treatments. We identified six
Wyoming big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis Beetle & Young) locations (152–381 mm precipitation) that
we...
More frequent wildfires and incidences of mega-fires have increased the pressure for fuel treatments in sagebrush (Artemisia) communities. Winter grazing has been one of many fuel treatments proposed for Wyoming big sagebrush (A. tridentata Nutt. subsp. wyomingensis Beetle and A. Young) communities. Though fire risk and severity can be reduced...
Forest management in the face of fire risk is a challenging problem because fire spreads across a landscape and because its occurrence is unpredictable. Additionally, management must be adjusted over time as unpredictable fire events are realized. Land managers have some control over the vegetation conditions that facilitate fire spread,...
Over the course of the last century, a successful history of fire suppression has contributed to unsuccessful present day control over wildfire. In the absence of fire and the janitorial and ecological services it provides, drier inland forests are shifting in species composition and exceeding densities that cannot survive and...
Fuel reduction treatments prescribed in fire-suppressed forests of western North America pose an
apparent paradox with respect to terrestrial carbon management. Such treatments have the immediate
effect of reducing forest carbon stocks but likely reduce future carbon losses through the combustion and
mortality caused by high-severity wildfires. Assessing the long-term...
The current conditions of many seasonally dry forests in the western and southern United States, especially those that once experienced low- to moderate-intensity fire regimes, leave them uncharacteristically susceptible to high-severity wildfire. Both prescribed fire and its mechanical surrogates are generally successful in meeting short-term fuel-reduction objectives such that treated...