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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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.

Displaying 1 - 25 of 30

Jones, Berrens
Recent growth in the frequency and severity of US wildfires has led to more wildfire smoke and increased public exposure to harmful air pollutants. Populations exposed to wildfire smoke experience a variety of negative health impacts, imposing economic costs on society. However…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Gharun, Possell, Bell, Adams
Fire plays a critical role in biodiversity, carbon balance, soil erosion, and nutrient and hydrological cycles. While empirical evidence shows that fuel reduction burning can reduce the incidence, severity and extent of unplanned fires in Australia and elsewhere, the integration…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Brenkert-Smith, Meldrum, Champ, Barth
Wildfire and the threat it poses to society represents an example of the complex, dynamic relationship between social and ecological systems. Increasingly, wildfire adaptation is posited as a pathway to shift the approach to fire from a suppression paradigm that seeks to control…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Butler, Marsh, Domitrovich, Helmkamp
Wildland fire fighting is a high-risk occupation requiring considerable physical and psychological demands. Multiple agencies publish fatality summaries for wildland firefighters; however, the reported number and types vary. At least five different surveillance systems capture…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Balch, Bradley, Abatzoglou, Nagy, Fusco, Mahood
The economic and ecological costs of wildfire in the United States have risen substantially in recent decades. Although climate change has likely enabled a portion of the increase in wildfire activity, the direct role of people in increasing wildfire activity has been largely…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Thompson, Calkin, Scott, Hand
Wildfire risk assessment is increasingly being adopted to support federal wildfire management decisions in the United States. Existing decision support systems, specifically the Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS), provide a rich set of probabilistic and risk‐based…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Suzuki, Manzello
It is well accepted that as structures are exposed to wind, stagnation planes are produced around structures. Past work by the authors demonstrated for the first-time that wind-driven firebrand showers may accumulate in these stagnation planes. While those experiments…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Thomas, Mueller, Santamaria, Gallagher, El Houssami, Filkov, Clark, Skowronski, Hadden, Mell, Simeoni
An experimental approach has been developed to quantify the characteristics and flux of firebrands during a management-scale wildfire in a pine-dominated ecosystem. By characterizing the local fire behavior and measuring the temporal and spatial variation in firebrand collection…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Wilson, McCaffrey, Toman
Throughout the late 19th century and most of the 20th century, risks associated with wildfire were addressed by suppressing fires as quickly as possible. However, by the 1960s, it became clear that fire exclusion policies were having adverse effects on ecological health, as well…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Brenkert-Smith, Meldrum, Champ, Barth
Wildfire and the threat it poses to society represents an example of the complex, dynamic relationship between social and ecological systems. Increasingly, wildfire adaptation is posited as a pathway to shift the approach to fire from a suppression paradigm that seeks to control…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Thompson, Dunn, Calkin
A changing climate, changing development and land use patterns, and increasing pressures on ecosystem services raise global concerns over growing losses associated with wildland fires. New management paradigms acknowledge that fire is inevitable and often uncontrollable, and…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Dunn, Thompson, Calkin
The impacts of wildfires have increased in recent decades because of historical forest and fire management, a rapidly changing climate, and an increasingly populated wildland urban interface. This increasingly complex fire environment highlights the importance of developing…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Guyette, Stambaugh, Dey, Muzika
The effects of climate on wildland fire confronts society across a range of different ecosystems. Water and temperature affect the combustion dynamics, irrespective of whether those are associated with carbon fueled motors or ecosystems, but through different chemical, physical…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

The Prescribed Fire Complexity Rating System Guide establishes interagency prescribed fire complexity analysis standards. The analysis provides a focused, subjective assessment by qualified prescribed fire burn bosses that is evaluated and approved by Agency Administrators, and…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Heinsch, Andrews, Tirmenstein
The fire characteristics chart is a graphical method of presenting U.S. National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) indexes and components as well as primary surface or crown fire behavior characteristics. Computer software has been developed to produce fire characteristics…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Officials GAO interviewed from the five federal agencies responsible for wildland fire management-the Forest Service with in the Department of Agriculture and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, and National Park Service with in…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Vaillant, Reinhardt
The National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy recognizes that wildfire is a necessary natural process in many ecosystems and strives to reduce conflicts between fire-prone landscapes and people. In an effort to mitigate potential negative wildfire impacts proactively,…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Dunn, Calkin, Thompson
Wildfire’s economic, ecological and social impacts are on the rise, fostering the realisation that business-as-usual fire management in the United States is not sustainable. Current response strategies may be inefficient and contributing to unnecessary responder exposure to…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Smith
On June 1, 2015, the Forest Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), celebrated the 100th anniversary of the Branch of Research. Established in 1915 to centralize and elevate the pursuit of research throughout the agency, the Branch of Research focused on…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

This guide provides homeowners with tools to assess your home's wildfire risk and prioritizes actions you can take to reduce that risk. The assessment worksheet included with this guide is intended to help you understand your risk and where vulnerabilities on your property may…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Schoennagel, Balch, Brenkert-Smith, Dennison, Harvey, Krawchuk, Mietkiewicz, Morgan, Moritz, Rasker, Turner, Whitlock
Wildfires across western North America have increased in number and size over the past three decades, and this trend will continue in response to further warming. As a consequence, the wildland–urban interface is projected to experience substantially higher risk of climate-…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Jones
Understanding the economic costs imposed by wildfire smoke is important to evaluating competing fire management approaches and setting appropriate mitigation budgets. The nascent literature on wildfire smoke costs has largely examined the indirect health costs associated with…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Qin, Flint
Local sociocultural processes including community perceptions and actions represent the most visible social impacts of various economic and environmental changes. Comparative community analysis has been used to examine diverse community perspectives on a variety of socioeconomic…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Hyde, Riley, Stoof
Wildfire increases the probability of debris flows posing hazardous conditions where values-at-risk exist downstream of burned areas. Conditions and processes leading to postfire debris flows usually follow a general sequence defined here as the postfire debris flow hazard…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Uncertainties are pervasive in natural hazards, and it is crucial to develop robust and meaningful approaches to characterize and communicate uncertainties to inform modeling efforts.  In this monograph we provide a broad, cross-disciplinary overview of issues relating to…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES