The Alaska Reference Database originated as the standalone Alaska Fire Effects Reference Database, a ProCite reference database maintained by former BLM-Alaska Fire Service Fire Ecologist Randi Jandt. It was expanded under a Joint Fire Science Program grant for the FIREHouse project (The Northwest and Alaska Fire Research Clearinghouse). It is now maintained by the Alaska Fire Science Consortium and FRAMES, and is hosted through the FRAMES Resource Catalog. The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.
Type
Topic
Year
Displaying 1 - 25 of 79
Reyes-García, Fernández-Llamazares, McElwee, Molnár, Öllerer, Wilson, Brondizio
Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLC) are affected by global environmental change because they directly rely on their immediate environment for meeting basic livelihood needs. Therefore, safeguarding and restoring ecosystem resilience is critical to support their well‐…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Alexander, Cruz
We have devised a rule of thumb for obtaining a first approximation of a fire’s spread rate that wildland fire operations personnel may find valuable in certain situations. It is based on the premise that under certain conditions wind speed is the dominant factor in determining…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Assessing risk in a postfire landscape: are currently available tools good for the local land owner?
Wildfires and events that follow such as flooding and erosion are natural disturbances in many ecosystems. However, when these types of postfire events threaten life, property, and resources they become a concern for resource managers, communities, and private landowners. A…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
CMATs work closely with incident management teams, Forest Service or other land management agencies, community residents and leaders to identify mitigation opportunities before a wildfire impacts the community. CMATs work with local partners to identify and help them resolve…
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Blunck, Butler, Bailey, Wagenbrenner
Spot fires caused by lofted embers (i.e., firebrands) can be a significant factor in the spread of wildland fires. Embers can be especially dangerous near the wildland urban interface (WUI) because of the potential for the fire to be spread near or among structures. Many studies…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Steblein, Miller, Soileau
The U.S. Geological Survey's Wildland Fire Science Program produces fundamental information to identify the causes of wildfires, understand the impacts and benefits of both wildfires and prescribed fires, and help prevent and manage larger, catastrophic events. Our fire…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Caton-Kerr, Tohidi, Gollner
During wildland fires, firebrands form once they break off of burning vegetation or structures. Many are then lofted into the fire plume where they are transported long distances ahead of the fire front, igniting new “spot” fires as they land. To date, very few studies have been…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Hedayati, Bahrani, Zhou, Quarles, Gorham
Generation of firebrands from various fuels has been well-studied in the past decade. Limited details have been released about the methodology for characterizing firebrands such as the proper sample size and the measurement process. This study focuses on (1) finding the minimum…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Takahashi
Each year, fires in the wildland-urban interface (WUI)—the place where homes and wildlands meet or intermingle—have caused significant damage to communities. To contribute to firefighter and public safety by reducing the risk of structure ignition, fire blankets for wrapping a…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Alexander
Heuristic approaches to problem solving, commonly called rules of thumb, employ practical, quick, in the moment, methods that are not intended to be strictly accurate or reliable in every situation but sufficient for most decision making situations, especially when there is…
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Hudson, Blunck
Spot fires caused by lofted embers (i.e. firebrands) can be a significant factor in the spread of wildfires. Embers can be especially dangerous near the wildland-urban interface (WUI) because of the potential for the fire to be spread near or on structures. This work sought to…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE) - Final Report to the Joint Fire Science Program
The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) and the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP) initiated the Fire and Smoke Model Experiment (FASMEE) (https://sites.google.com/firenet.gov/fasmee/) by funding Project 15-S-01-01 to identify and collect a set of…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Brown
In the last 50 years, Federal fire policy has undergone tremendous change. Some people (including the author) can still remember when the goal of wildland firefighting was simple: put out every fire by 10 a.m. on the morning after it was first detected. Since then, Federal…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Monedero, Ramírez, Cardil
Accurately predicting fire spread and behaviour on the fireline, in the field, is highly important in order to prevent the loss of human life, improve the success of initial attack and better understand the potential fire behaviour, minimizing many risks for firefighters. We…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Pingree, Kobziar
Soil heating caused by prescribed or wildland fire commonly focuses on a single biological thermal threshold of 60 °C for the duration of one minute to represent organism death. This metric severely misrepresents the heterogeneity of the soil environment, the physiological…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Evers, Ager, Nielsen-Pincus, Palaiologou, Bunzel
Risk management typologies and their resulting archetypes can structure the many social and biophysical drivers of community wildfire risk into a set number of strategies to build community resilience. Existing typologies omit key factors that determine the scale and mechanism…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Suzuki, Manzello
Firebrands generated from structures are known to be a source of rapid flame spread within communities in large outdoor fires, such as wildland-urban (WUI) fires, and urban fires. It is important to better understand firebrand generation mechanism to prevent structure ignitions…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Joshi, Poudyal, Weir, Fuhlendorf, Ochuodho
While prescribed burning is a proven tool in the management of forests and grasslands, its use has been limited due, in part, to potential risks that may result in legal liability, property damage, and personal injury. The purpose of this study is to understand the factors that…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Hakes, Salehizadeh, Weston-Dawkes, Gollner
The cause of the majority of structure losses in wildland-urban interface fires is ignition via firebrands, small pieces of burning material generated from burning vegetation and structures. To understand the mechanism of these losses, small-scale experiments designed to capture…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Kolden
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 prescribed fire is often the most…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Loomis, Sanchez, González-Cabán, Rideout, Reich
This paper reports the results of two hypotheses tests regarding whether fuel reduction treatments using prescribed burning and mechanical methods reduces wildfire suppression costs and property damages. To test these two hypotheses data was collected on fuel treatments, fire…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Dotson, Carroll
Is the risk of death the same when implementing "planned events"? What do the numbers we have as well as some specific events have say about that? Travis Dotson will provide prescribed fire practitioners a few specific elements to consider related to this topic and lessons…
Year: 2019
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Gwynne, Ronchi, Bénichou, Kinateder, Kuligowski, Gomaa, Adelzadeh
Wildland‐urban interface (WUI) fire incidents are likely to become more severe and will affect more and more people. Given their scale and complexity, WUI incidents require a multidomain approach to assess their impact and the effectiveness of any mitigation efforts. The authors…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Pausas, Keeley
Wildfires are often perceived as destructive disturbances, but we propose that when integrating evolutionary and socioecological factors, fires in most ecosystems can be understood as natural processes that provide a variety of benefits to humankind. Wildfires generate open…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Cruz, Alexander
Key message: The collective analysis of a relatively large number of wildfire observations documented in conifer forests, dry eucalypt forests and temperate shrublands revealed that the forward rate of fire spread is roughly 10% of the average 10-m open wind speed, provided both…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES