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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.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 157
Alexander, Thorburn
As an acronym, LACES stands for Lookout(s) - Anchor point(s) - Communication(s) - Escape routes - Safety zone(s) and has gradually become a guideline for wildland firefighter safety in various regions of Canada over the past 15 years or so. LACES constitutes a slight…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Johnston, van Kooten
In an effort to reduce CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning, renewable energy policies incentivize use of forest biomass as an energy source. Many governments have assumed (legislated) the carbon flux from burning biomass to be neutral because biomass growth sequesters CO2.…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Val Martin, Pierce, Heald
From the text ... 'Smoke can be transported hundreds of miles downwind by prevailing winds or convective winds generated by fires themselves with concentrations sufficient to make it the most significant source of air pollution over large areas.'
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Heilman, Tang, Luo, Zhong, Winkler, Bian
From the text ... 'Researchers at Michigan State University and the Forest Services's Northern Research Station worked on a joint study to examine the possible effects of future global and regional climate change on the occurrence of fire-weather patterns often associated with…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Paudel, Nitschke, Simard, Innes
The southwestern region of the Yukon Territory of Canada has experienced an unprecedented spruce bark beetle outbreak (Dendroctonus rufipennis) and an increase in the frequency of forest fires that extend beyond historical trends and that have caused significant impacts on…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Liu, Hussaini, Okten
Rothermel's wildland surface fire spread model is widely used in North America. The model outputs depend on a number of input parameters, which can be broadly categorized as fuel model, fuel moisture, terrain, and wind parameters. Due to the inevitable presence of uncertainty in…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Finney, Cohen, Forthofer, McAllister, Gollner, Gorham, Saito, Akafuah, Adam, English
Large wildfires of increasing frequency and severity threaten local populations and natural resources and contribute carbon emissions into the earth-climate system. Although wildfires have been researched and modeled for decades, no verifiable physical theory of spread is…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Duff, Tolhurst
Wildfires are an inherent part of the landscape in many parts of the world; however, they often impose substantial economic burdens on human populations where they occur, both in terms of impacts and of management costs. As wildfires burn towards human assets, a universal…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Brown, Jorgenson, Douglas, Romanovsky, Kielland, Hiemstra, Euskirchen, Ruess
We examined the effects of fire disturbance on permafrost degradation and thaw settlement across a series of wildfires (from similar to 1930 to 2010) in the forested areas of collapse-scar bog complexes in the Tanana Flats lowland of interior Alaska. Field measurements were…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Appenzeller
From the text ... 'The trees of the boreal, after all, are used to fire. The dominant species in Alaska and much of Canada, black spruce, maintains an aerial storehouse of seeds, locked in cones that form a distinctive tuft at the treetop. When a fire singes the cones and melts…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Wang, Thompson, Marshall, Tymstra, Carr, Flannigan
In Canadian forests, the majority of burned area occurs on a small number of days of extreme fire weather. These days lie within the tail end of the distribution of fire weather, and are often the periods when fire suppression capacity is most challenged. We examined the…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Rissman, Owley, Shaw, Thompson
Perpetual conservation easements (CEs) are popular for restricting development and land use, but their fixed terms create challenges for adaptation to climate change. The increasing pace of environmental and social change demands adaptive conservation instruments. To examine the…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Liu, Jimenez, Hussaini, Okten, Goodrick
Rothermel's wildland surface fire model is a popular model used in wildland fire management. The original model has a large number of parameters, making uncertainty quantification challenging. In this paper, we use variance-based global sensitivity analysis to reduce the number…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Lee, Schlemme, Murray, Unsworth
Little research has focused on the economic impact associated with climate-change induced wildland fire on natural ecosystems and the goods and services they provide. We examine changes in wildland fire patterns based on the U.S. Forest Service's MC1 dynamic global vegetation…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Huang, Dahal, Liu, Jin, Young, Li, Liu
The albedo change caused by fires and the subsequent succession is spatially heterogeneous, leading to the need to assess the spatiotemporal variation of surface shortwave forcing (SSF) as a component to quantify the climate impacts of high-latitude fires. We used an image…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Girardin, Terrier
Wildfire activity is projected to increase through upcoming decades in boreal Canada due to climatic changes. Amongst the proposed strategies to offset the climate-driven fire risk is the introduction of broadleaf species into dense-coniferous landscapes so as to decrease the…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Fox, Whitesides
Spreading fires are noisy (and potentially chaotic) systems in which transitions in dynamics are notoriously difficult to predict. As flames move through spatially heterogeneous environments, sudden shifts in temperature, wind, or topography can generate combustion instabilities…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Smurthwaite
From the text ... 'What does the future of rangelands and wildfire look like? The easy answer to the question is that rangelands will look different in the future and so will wildfire occurrence and behavior.'
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Brown, Jorgenson, Douglas, Romanovsky, Kielland, Hiemstra, Euskirchen, Ruess
We examined the effects of fire disturbance on permafrost degradation and thaw settlement across a series of wildfires (from ~1930 to 2010) in the forested areas of collapse‐scar bog complexes in the Tanana Flats lowland of interior Alaska. Field measurements were combined with…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Thoman
The tools and techniques for making monthly and season scale climate forecasts are rapidly changing, with the potential to provide useful forecasts at the month and longer range. Subjects reviewed include recent climate conditions around Alaska, some forecast tools, and the…
Year: 2015
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Based primarily on the Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS) component parts, the Fire Weather Index (FWI) System and the Fire Behavior Prediction (FBP) System, this document can be used to guide learning users through the fire behavior assessment process from the…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Voulgarakis, Field
Fires impact atmospheric composition through their emissions, which range from long-lived gases to short-lived gases and aerosols. Effects are typically larger in the tropics and boreal regions but can also be substantial in highly populated areas in the northern mid-latitudes.…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
This guide is intended as a reference for US users who may have reason to work with the system in the United States, where English units are primarily used. Keep in mind that the Canadian Forest Service has produced the definitive selection of reference publications and tools…
Year: 2015
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Ziel
Robert "Zeke" Ziel, a long-term analyst and fire behavior specialist for the State of Alaska, Zeke gives an overview of the past and current tools used in Alaska (and elsewhere) for Landscape Risk Assessment and exposure to wildfire. Modeling is more art than science in that the…
Year: 2015
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Hansen
Climate and disturbance regimes are expected to change profoundly in 21st century forests. Whether and where forests may succumb to projected trends and shift to different ecosystem states is poorly resolved but essential for anticipating both ecological and social consequences…
Year: 2015
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES