Wildfires pose complex challenges to policymakers and fire agencies. Fuel break networks and area-wide fuel treatments are risk-management options to reduce losses from large fires. Two fuel management scenarios covering 3% of the fire-prone Algarve region of Portugal and differing in the intensity of treatment in 120-m wide fuel breaks...
The infrequent occurrence of large wildfires in the southern Appalachian Mountains over the last several decades has offered few opportunities to study their impacts. From 2000 to 2008, five wildfires burned a large portion of the area in and surrounding the Linville Gorge Wilderness in North Carolina. Areas were burned...
The number of wildland–urban interface communities affected by wildfire is increasing, and both wildfire suppression and losses are costly. However, little is known about post-wildfire response by homeowners and communities after buildings are lost. Our goal was to characterise rebuilding and new development after wildfires across the conterminous United States....
Fire has largely been excluded from many mountain big sagebrush communities. Managers are reluctant to
reintroduce fire, especially in communities without significant conifer encroachment, because of the decline in sagebrush-associated
wildlife. Given this management direction, a better understanding of fire exclusion and burning effects is
needed. We compared burned to...
Policymakers seek ways to encourage fuel reduction among private forest landowners to augment similar efforts on federal and state lands. Motivating landowners to contribute to landscape-level wildfire protection requires an understanding of factors that underlie landowner behaviour regarding wildfire. We developed a conceptual framework
describing landowners’ propensity to conduct fuel...
Where a legacy of aggressive wildland fire suppression has left forests in need of fuel reduction, allowing wildland fire to burn may provide fuel treatment benefits, thereby reducing suppression costs from subsequent fires. The least-cost-plus-net-value-change model of wildland fire economics includes benefits of wildfire in a framework for evaluating suppression...
Bembidion (Sloanephila) tahitiense, sp. nov., is described from Mont Mauru, an isolated massif of Tahiti Nui volcano. Based upon evidence from seven genes (four nuclear protein-coding, one mitochondrial protein-coding, two nuclear ribosomal), its sister group is the Australian B. jacksoniense Guérin-Méneville, with which it shares a synapomorphic spur on the...
The 12-site National Fire and Fire Surrogate study (FFS) was a multivariate experiment that evaluated ecological consequences of alternative fuel-reduction treatments in seasonally dry forests of the US. Each site was a replicated experiment with a common design that compared an un-manipulated control, prescribed fire, mechanical and mechanical + fire...
Many exotic annual grasses are believed to increase wildfire frequency to the detriment of native vegetation
by increasing fine fuels and thus, creating a grass-fire cycle. However, information on differences in fuel characteristics
between invaded and non-invaded plant communities is lacking, or is based mainly on speculation and anecdotal evidence....
As with other aspects of natural-resource management, the approach to managing wildland fires has evolved
over time as scientific understanding has advanced and the broader context surrounding management decisions has
changed. Prior to 2000 the primary focus of most fire research was on the physical and ecological aspects of fire;...