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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.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 51 - 75 of 113
Enninful, Torvi
A numerical model of heat transfer in dry soil was developed to predict temperatures and depth of lethal heat penetration during cone calorimeter tests used to simulate wildland fire exposures. The model was used to compare predictions made using constant and temperature-…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Sharples
The effects of wind and topographic slope are important considerations when determining the rate and direction of spread of wildfires. Accordingly, most models used to predict the direction and rate of spread contain components designed to account for these effects. Over the…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Preisler, Chen, Fujioka, Benoit, Westerling
The National Fire Danger Rating System indices deduced from a regional simulation weather model were used to estimate probabilities and numbers of large fire events on monthly and 1-degree grid scales. The weather model simulations and forecasts are ongoing experimental products…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Liang, Calkin, Gebert, Venn, Silverstein
There is an urgent and immediate need to address the excessive cost of large fires. Here, we studied large wildland fire suppression expenditures by the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service. Among 16 potential non-managerial factors, which represented fire size and shape…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Jimenez, Hussaini, Goodrick
The purpose of the present work is to quantify parametric uncertainty in the Rothermel wildland fire spread model (implemented in software such as BehavePlus3 and FARSITE), which is undoubtedly among the most widely used fire spread models in the United States. This model…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Higgins, Bond, Trollope, Williams
We develop empirical models for the rate of spread and intensity of fires in grass fuels. The models are based on a well-known physical analogy for the rate of spread of a fire through a continuous fuelbed. Unlike other models based on this analogy, we do not attempt to directly…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Woodall, Westfall, Lutes, Oswalt
Coarse woody debris (CWD) may be defined as dead and down trees of a certain minimum size that are an important forest ecosystem component (e.g., wildlife habitat, carbon stocks, and fuels). Due to field efficiency concerns, some natural resource inventories only measure the…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Stockli, Rutishauser, Dragoni, O'Keefe, Thornton, Jolly, Lu, Denning
Predicting the global carbon and water cycle requires a realistic representation of vegetation phenology in climate models. However most prognostic phenology models are not yet suited for global applications, and diagnostic satellite data can be uncertain and lack predictive…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Seli, Ager, Crookston, Finney, Bahro, Agee, McHugh
A simulation system was developed to explore how fuel treatments placed in random and optimal spatial patterns affect the growth and behavior of large fires when implemented at different rates over the course of five decades. The system consists of several command line programs…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Miller, Parisien, Ager, Finney
Spatially explicit information on the probability of burning is necessary for virtually all strategic fire and fuels management planning activities, including conducting wildland fire risk assessments, optimizing fuel treatments, and prevention planning. Predictive models…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Forthofer
The Rapid Data Delivery System (RDDS) (formerly called 'Fire Data Ordering') from the USGS is an interactive web based GIS tool useful for downloading the DEM files required for use in WindNinja and WindWizard. The tool allows users to zoom into the desired area and extract a…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
McHugh
Documents the steps taken to input WindWizard generated gridded wind direction into ArcView 3.2x.
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
McHugh
Documents the steps taken to input WindWizard generated gridded wind direction into ArcMap 8.3.
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
In 1972, aeronautical engineer Richard C. Rothermel, of the USDA Fire Sciences Lab at Missoula, Montana, developed a method for modeling the spread of wildfire. The model became widely used, and although the ensuing years have brought many technological innovations, it is still…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Andersen, McGaughey, Reutebuch
High resolution, active remote sensing technologies, such as interferometric synthetic aperture radar (IFSAR) and airborne laser scanning (lidar) have the capability to provide forest managers with direct measurements of 3-dimensional forest canopy surface structure. While lidar…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Lightning is a natural source of wildfire ignitions and causes a substantial portion of large wildfires across the globe. Simple predictions of lightning activity don't accurately determine fire ignition potential because fuel conditions must be considered in addition to the…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Stephen, Sorbel
In the absence of available LANDFIRE data in Alaska, a FARSITE landscape file was generated for the Tanana Zone Wildland Fire Decision Support System (WFDSS) prototype by applying a cross-walk to the recently released Alaska National Land Cover Data (NLCD) dataset. In an effort…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Stephen, Sorbel
Guidelines for running a FSPro analysis and calibrating a FSPro run for Alaska, with the disclaimer that WFDSS/FSPro is a prototype application that is currently under development.
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Clements, Zhong, Bian, Heilman, Byun
Wildland fires radically modify the atmospheric boundary layer by inducing strong fire-atmosphere interactions. These interactions lead to intense turbulence production in and around the fire front. Two field experiments were conducted in tall-grass fuels to quantify turbulence…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Roxburgh, Rein
The use of counter-fires to gain control over wildfires is a technique used by some fire services around the world. A fire is purposely lighted ahead of the wildfire and the buoyancy induced in-drafts pull it towards the flame front thus creating a fire break of burnt fuel. Well…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Girardin, Sauchyn
Annual area burned (AAB) variability in northwestern North America was inferred from 38 tree-ring width chronologies widely distributed across boreal regions and spanning the past 300 years and the minimum 1833-1998 interval. AAB estimates accounted for up to 61% of the variance…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Wiitala, Wilson
Recent advances in operations research and computer technologies present new opportunities to improve preseason wildland fire planning tools. In this paper, we describe the Wildfire Initial Response Assessment System (WIRAS), a stochastic simulation model that incorporates many…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Hatfield, Wiitala, Wilson, Levy
An algorithm is described that quickly calculates minimum travel times between locations for initial response forest fire suppression units. The algorithm was developed for integration into wildfire planning simulation models to quickly identify fire suppression units with the…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Roose, Ballard, Manley, Saleen, Harbert
Following the 1994 fire season in the United States of America the five federal wildland fire agencies and bureaus within the Departments of Agriculture and Interior along with the State Foresters conducted a review of the Federal Fire Policy. Lack of a common, interagency fire…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Botti, Rideout, Kirsch
Fire use enables fire managers to take advantage of the beneficial effects that natural ignitions may have on the landscape. Under the right circumstances, fire managers may choose to forgo initial attack in favor of monitoring and managing natural ignitions in ways that improve…
Year: 2008
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES