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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.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 66
Shanks Rodrigues
Wildland firefighting in Alaska is changing due to the impact of climate change on the boreal forest. Changes to the wildland firefighting regime could have significant impacts on community participation during fall subsistence hunting and, consequentially, food security levels…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Rissman, Burke, Kramer, Radeloff, Schilke, Selles, Toczydlowski, Wardropper, Barrow, Chandler, Geleynse, L'roe, Laushman, Schomaker
The ecological literature offers many conflicting recommendations for how managers should respond to ecosystem change and novelty. We propose a framework in which forest managers may achieve desired forest characteristics by combining strategies for (1) restoring historical…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Power, Codding, Taylor, Swetnam, Magargal, Bird, O'Connell
The primacy of past human activity in triggering change in earth’s ecosystems remains a contested idea. Treating human-environmental dynamics as a dichotomous phenomenon – turning “on” or “off” at some tipping point in the past – misses the broader, longer-term, and varied role…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Malevich, Guiterman, Margolis
We developed a new software package, burnr, for fire history analysis and plotting in the R statistical programming environment. It was developed for tree-ring fire-scar analysis, but is broadly applicable to other event analyses (e.g., avalanches, frost rings, or culturally…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
White, Gaff
Tick population control technologies have been studied for several decades but no method is successful in all situations. The success of each technology depends on tick species identity and abundance, host species identity and abundance, phenology of both ticks and hosts,…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Bengston, Peck, Olson, Barros, Birdsey, Williams, Leyva Reyes, Zamudio-Sanchez
North American forests and forest management institutions are experiencing a wide range of significant ecological disturbances and socioeconomic changes, which point to the need for enhanced resilience. A critical capacity for resilience in institutions is strategic foresight.…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Garcia-Oliva, Merino, Fonturbel, Omil, Fernandez, Vega
Forest productivity is limited by soil P availability in several forest ecosystems worldwide. Most of the soil available P is probably produced by the mineralization of organic forms of P when these forms dominate in the soil. Severe wildfires lead to loss of soil organic…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Vanderhoof, Hawbaker
Landsat Normalised Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) is commonly used to monitor post-fire green-up; however, most studies do not distinguish new growth of conifer from deciduous or herbaceous species, despite potential consequences for local climate, carbon and wildlife. We…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Hood, Varner, van Mantgem, Cansler
Each year wildland fires kill and injure trees on millions of forested hectares globally, affecting plant and animal biodiversity, carbon storage, hydrologic processes, and ecosystem services. The underlying mechanisms of fire-caused tree mortality remain poorly understood,…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
This reference work encompasses the current, accepted state of the art in the science of wildfires and wildfires that spread to communities, known as wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires. More than 300 author contributions include accepted knowledge on these topics from…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Pyne
Fire is special. Even among the ancient elements, fire is different because it alone is a reaction. It synthesizes its surroundings; it takes its character from its context. It varies by place, by culture, and by time. It has no single expression. There is no single way to…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Vermeire, Russell
Fire plays a central role in influencing ecosystem patterns and processes. However, documentation of fire seasonality and plant community response is limited in semiarid grasslands. We evaluated aboveground biomass, cover, and frequency response to summer, fall, and spring fires…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
O'Brien, Hiers, Varner, Hoffman, Dickinson, Michaletz, Loudermilk, Butler
Purpose of Review: The search for causal mechanisms in fire ecology has been slow to progress for two main reasons. First, many fire ecology investigations often occur after fires, with no detailed information on fire behavior. These fire effects are then used to infer both fire…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Meddens, Kolden, Lutz, Smith, Cansler, Abatzoglou, Meigs, Downing, Krawchuk
Fire refugia are landscape elements that remain unburned or minimally affected by fire, thereby supporting postfire ecosystem function, biodiversity, and resilience to disturbances. Although fire refugia have been studied across continents, scales, and affected taxa, they have…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Geiser, Stawski, Doty, Cooper, Nowack
Although wildfires are increasing globally, available information on how mammals respond behaviourally and physiologically to fires is scant. Despite a large number of ecological studies, often examining animal diversity and abundance before and after fires, the reasons as to…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
The fires that ravaged Yellowstone National Park in 1988 were large and severe, but they were still within the normal limits of fire regimes in the West. Following those fires 30 years ago, University of Wisconsin–Madison Professor of Integrative Biology, Monica Turner,…
Year: 2018
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Kelly, Brotons, Giljohann, McCarthy, Pausas, Smith
Conserving animals and plants in fire-prone landscapes requires evidence of how fires affect modified ecosystems. Despite progress on this front, fire ecology is restricted by a dissonance between two dominant paradigms: ‘fire mosaics’ and ‘functional types’. The fire mosaic…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Aslan, Samberg, Dickson, Gray
Changes in fire frequency, size, and severity are driving ecological transformations in many systems. In arid and semi-arid regions that are adapted to fire, long-term fire exclusion by managers leads to declines in fire frequency, altered fire size distribution, and increased…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Watch a serotinous Rocky Mountain lodgepole pine cone heat up and open.
Year: 2018
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Fischer
Many of the most pressing threats to forests result from complex interactions between multiple stressors and require management on large spatial and temporal scales. For this reason, many ecosystem managers have begun to recognize the need to consider the broader context of…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Dey, Schweitzer
The long history of fire in North America spans millennia and is recognized as an important driver in the widespread and long-term dominance of oak species and oak natural communities. Frequent wildfires from about 1850 to 1950 resulted in much forest damage, and gained fire a…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Lojewski
As forests grow, the trees absorb CO2 from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it within their growing biomass (trunk, branches, leaves and root systems). A “forest carbon offset,” is a metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e)—the emission of which is avoided…
Year: 2018
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Eales, Haddaway, Bernes, Cooke, Jonsson, Kouki, Petrokofsky, Taylor
Background: While the effects of prescribed burning on tree regeneration and on pyrophilous and/or saproxylic species are relatively well known, effects on other organisms are less clear. The primary aim of this systematic review was to clarify how biodiversity is affected by…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Koltz, Burkle, Pressler, Dell, Vidal, Richards, Murphy
Climate change is drastically altering global fire regimes, which may affect the structure and function of insect communities. Insect responses to fire are strongly tied to fire history, plant responses, and changes in species interactions. Many insects already possess adaptive…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Tepley, Thomann, Veblen, Perry, Holz, Paritsis, Kitzberger, Anderson-Teixeira
In the context of ongoing climatic warming, forest landscapes face increasing risk of conversion to non‐forest vegetation through alteration of their fire regimes and their post‐fire recovery dynamics. However, this pressure could be amplified or dampened, depending on how fire‐…
Year: 2018
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES