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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.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 27
Lopes, Ribeiro, Viegas, Raposo
The present work addresses the problem of how wind should be taken into account in fire spread simulations. The study was based on the software system FireStation, which incorporates a surface fire spread model and a solver for the fluid flow (Navier-Stokes) equations. The…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Gould, Sullivan, Hurley, Koul
Different methods can be used to measure the time and distance of travel of a fire and thus its speed. The selection of a particular method will depend on the experimental objectives, design, scale, location (in the laboratory or field), required accuracy and resources available…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Ziel
This guide offers recommendations for using Canadian Forest Fire Danger Rating System (CFFDRS) fuel moisture codes and fire behavior indices from the Fire Weather Index (FWI) system to provide objective guidance for initial settings for many analysis inputs to WFDSS and IFTDSS.…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
These tables calculate Dew Point and Relative Humidity based on the observed wet bulb and dry bulb temperatures and the elevation at the site of the observation.
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
A diversity of partners and interests, federal to private, came together to identify current challenges and research in the wildland fire and air quality impacts realm. Meeting management needs and the opportunity to learn from one another’s expert perspectives were primary…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
The following list of fire research topics and questions were generated by the agencies and organizations within AWFCG during 2016 Fall Fire Review and through other solicitations. The topics were initially ranked by the AWFCG Fire Research, Development and Application Committee…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Weather describes short-term variations in the atmosphere from hot to cold, wet to dry, calm to stormy, clear to cloudy. Read more at Fire Facts: What is? Weather.
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Fire behavior is the way a fire acts - how and when fuels ignite, flames develop, and fire spreads as influenced by its interaction with fuel, weather, and topography. Read more at Fire Facts: What is? Fire Behavior.
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Trend analysis of fire season length and extreme fire weather in North America between 1979 and 2015
We have constructed a fire weather climatology over North America from 1979 to 2015 using the North American Regional Reanalysis dataset and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (FWI) System. We tested for the presence of trends in potential fire season length, based on a…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Calef, Varvak, McGuire
In western North America, the carbon-rich boreal forest is experiencing warmer temperatures, drier conditions and larger and more frequent wildfires. However, the fire regime is also affected by direct human activities through suppression, ignition, and land use changes. Models…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Coen, Schroeder
Large wildland fires are complex, dynamic phenomena that can encounter a wide range of fuels, terrain, and weather during a single event. They can produce intense firewhirls that snap mature trees and generate blowups. They can send 300-foot (100-m) bursts of flame shooting…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Goodrick, Brown, Jolly
In a pair of review papers, Potter (2012a, 2012b) summarized the significant fire weather research findings over about the past hundred years. Our scientific understanding of wildland fire-atmosphere interactions has evolved: from simple correlations supporting the notion that…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Werth
Eyewitness accounts in journals and diaries have documented the relationship between weather and large wildland fire for over a hundred years. Even a hundred years ago, observers recognized short periods of up to several days in every fire season when wildland fuels were…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Hockenberry
A Red Flag Warning (RFW) is the fundamental fire-weather-warning product of the National Weather Service. Various publications and online meeting notes show that RFWs originated in the late 1950s to early 1960s. Early sources defined the RFW as an indication of weather expected…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Sharples, McRae, Simpson, Fox-Hughes, Clements
The presence of mountains-or even hills-in the path of an airmass can have important effects on the characteristics of the air. Temperature, humidity, wind speed, and wind direction can all vary greatly across complex terrain, and the variation of any of these factors will…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Heffernan
The role of meteorology in wild-land fire management is varied. It takes an entire interagency team of highly qualified scientists to fill the needs of the wildland fire community. Employees of several Federal agencies, as well as people in the research community, have fire-…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Dannenberg, Wise
Much of the precipitation delivered to western North America arrives during the cool season via midlatitude Pacific storm tracks, which may experience future shifts in response to climate change. Here, we assess the sensitivity of the hydroclimate and ecosystems of western North…
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
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
Lin, Horowitz, Payton, Fiore, Tonnesen
US surface O3 responds to varying global-to-regional precursor emissions, climate, and extreme weather, with implications for designing effective air quality control policies. We examine these conjoined processes with observations and global chemistry-climate model (GFDL-AM3)…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Padhi, Shotorban, Mahalingam
A three-dimensional physics-based model was used to investigate the effect of shrub size, shrub separation distance and wind on the burnout times of shrubs. The shrub considered for this study was chamise. Two shrub sizes with different physical dimensions and initial masses…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Jandt
Alaska’s fire managers are well aware that most boreal burning occurs during relatively brief periods of high fire activity. This was well-illustrated in the 2015 fire season (below). There is also evidence to suggest that fires may be more severe (Barrett and Kasischke 2013)…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Jandt
Our Research Brief this month covers a new NASA-funded study led by Sander Veraverbeke of Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam which found lightning storms to be a main driver of recent large fire seasons in Alaska and Canada. Results of the study are published in the July, 2017…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
The significant wildland fire potential forecasts included in this outlook represent the cumulative forecasts of the ten Geographic Area Predictive Services units and the National Predictive Services unit.
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Veraverbeke, Rogers, Goulden, Jandt, Miller, Wiggins, Randerson
Changes in climate and fire regimes are transforming the boreal forest, the world’s largest biome. Boreal North America recently experienced two years with large burned area: 2014 in the Northwest Territories and 2015 in Alaska. Here we use climate, lightning, fire and…
Year: 2017
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES