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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.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 112
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
Belval, Wei, Bevers
Wildland firefighting requires managers to make decisions in complex decision environments that hold many uncertainties; these decisions need to be adapted dynamically over time as fire behavior evolves. Models used in firefighting decisions should also have the capability to…
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
Moore
Purpose of Review: This review is on global wildland fire management research needs from the standpoint of 'integrated fire management'. It seeks to apply a characterisation of fires to frame research needs, and also recognise some differences in research needs between 'normal…
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
Soliman, Cagan, Buldum
This study aims to encourage the idea of utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles in the fire-fighting application. In this paper, we present a remote-controlled rotary-wing unmanned aerial vehicle made from metal alloys. This unmanned aerial vehicle, using a payload drop mechanism,…
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
Thompson, Wei, Calkin, O'Connor, Dunn, Anderson, Hogland
Purpose of Review: The objectives of this paper are to briefly review basic risk management and analytics concepts, describe their nexus in relation to wildfire response, demonstrate real-world application of analytics to support response decisions and organizational learning,…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Brown
ince the 1990s, USDA Forest Service employees and leaders have taken steps to improve the agency's safety record (USDA Forest Service 2018), resulting in a declining number of fatalities since 2010. Yet wildland firefighter entrapments have persisted (NIFC 2018), despite the…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Black, Boyatzis, Thiel, Rochford
Effective leadership of wildland fire operations requires paying careful attention to the fire itself and to relationships both internal and external to the incident. At the center of the action is the incident commander (IC), who must integrate her or his skill in managing the…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Brown
The culture of the USDA Forest Service has been shaped by the maxim 'Certainly it can be done' (Pinchot 1947), borrowed from the Coast Guard by the agency's first Chief, Gifford Pinchot (1905-10). From the moment employees joined the Forest Service beginning in 1905, they…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Page, Butler
Wildland firefighters work in complex and dynamic environments, with many dangers that pose serious threats to their safety. Falling snags and rocks, steep and rugged terrain, and rapid increases in fire behavior are just some of the dangers that affect wildland firefighters.…
Year: 2019
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Harbour
Fires that occur outside buildings, improvements, and structures, whether fueled by grass, brush, forest, timber, or other materials, are the wildland fires we deal with in the fire service. A wildland fire can take many forms: thousands of acres of trees on fire; the purposeful…
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
Rossi, Kuusela
The effectiveness of annual investments in US wildfire management programs has been subject to public criticism. One source of inefficiency may arise from a fragmented budgeting process. In the United States, federal budgets for wildfire management operations are not determined…
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
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