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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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.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 82

Index for characterizing post-fire soil environments in temperate coniferous forests

Jain, Pilliod, Graham, Lentile, Sandquist
Many scientists and managers have an interest in describing the environment following a fire to understand the effects on soil productivity, vegetation growth, and wildlife habitat, but little research has focused on the scientific rationale for classifying the post-fire…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Chapter 6: Fire Effects on materials of the historic period

Haecker
From the Summary ... 'Exposure of a historic structure or object to fire, regardless of the temperature that is generated, does not necessarily equate with destroying its value as a cultural resource. For instance, a low-temperature prescribed fire that burns over a trash…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Chapter 4: Fire effects on flaked stone, ground stone, and other stone artifacts

Deal
From Lithic Artifacts and Fire ... 'Artifacts made of stone are generally the best preserved of all material types in the archaeological record, often providing the only evidence of where people lived and worked in the past. Despite its durability, stone can be affected by fire…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

The footprint of Alaskan tundra fires during the past half-century: implications for surface properties and radiative forcing

Rocha, Loranty, Higuera, Mack, Hu, Jones, Breen, Rastetter, Goetz, Shaver
Recent large and frequent fires above the Alaskan arctic circle have forced a reassessment of the ecological and climatological importance of fire in arctic tundra ecosystems. Here we provide a general overview of the occurrence, distribution, and ecological and climate…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Investigating correlations between snowmelt and forest fires in a high latitude snowmelt dominated drainage basin

Semmens, Ramage
High latitude drainage basins are experiencing increases in temperature higher than the global average, with snowmelt dominated basins most sensitive to effects in winter because of the snowpack's integration of these changes over the season. This may influence the timing of…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Forest fire research questions the wisdom of prescribed burns

Robbins
From the text ... 'The United States Forest Service, which manages nearly 200 million acres of public land, believes limited thinning and burning will prevent catastrophic wildfires. The agency contracts with logging companies to cut down large and small trees across sweeping…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Modeling soil heating and moisture transport under extreme conditions: forest fires and slash pile burns

Massman
Heating any soil during a sufficiently intense wildfire or prescribed burn can alter it irreversibly, causing many significant, long-term biological, chemical, and hydrological effects. Given the climate-change-driven increasing probability of wildfires and the increasing use of…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Smoke science plan: the path forward

LeQuire, Hunter
From the text ... 'Wildland fire managers face increasingly steep challenges to meet air quality standards while planning prescribed fire and its inevitable smoke emissions. The goals of sound fire management practices, including fuel load reduction through prescribed burning,…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Integrating theoretical climate and fire effects on savanna and forest systems

Staver, Levin
The role of fire and climate in determining savanna and forest distributions requires comprehensive theoretical reevaluation. Empirical studies show that climate constrains maximum tree cover and that fire feedbacks can reduce tree cover substantially, but neither the stability…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

The natives are restless, but not often and mostly when disturbed

Simberloff, Souza, Nuñez, Barrios-Garcia, Bunn
The argument that the threat posed by introduced species is overblown is often buttressed by the observation that native species sometimes also become invasive. An examination of the literature on plant invasions in the United States shows that six times more nonnative species…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Moving beyond the cambium necrosis hypothesis of post-fire tree mortality: cavitation and deformation of xylem in forest fires

Michaletz, Johnson, Tyree
• It is widely assumed that post-fire tree mortality results from necrosis of phloem and vascular cambium in stems, despite strong evidence that reduced xylem conductivity also plays an important role.• In this study, experiments with Populus balsamifera were used to demonstrate…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Using periodic line fires to gain a new perspective on multi-dimensional aspects of forward fire spread

Linn, Canfield, Cunningham, Edminster, Dupuy, Pimont
This study was conducted to increase understanding of possible roles and importance of local three-dimensionality in the forward spread of wildfire models. A suite of simulations was performed using a coupled atmosphere-fire model, HIGRAD/FIRETEC, consisting of different…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

A meta-analysis of the effects of common management actions on the nest success of North American birds

Hartway, Mills
Management strategies for the recovery of declining bird populations often must be made without sufficient data to predict the outcome of proposed actions or sufficient time and resources necessary to collect these data. We quantitatively reviewed studies of bird management in…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Once burned, twice shy: repeat fires reduce seed availability and alter substrate constraints on Picea mariana regeneration

Brown, Johnstone
Widespread climate change is expected to lead to altered patterns of disturbance, thereby driving future ecosystem change. This interaction, which is often poorly recognized or understood, may be particularly important in the sub-arctic due to rapid climate change and frequent…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Interdependencies between flame length and fireline intensity in predicting crown fire initiation and crown scorch height

Alexander, Cruz
This state-of-knowledge review examines some of the underlying assumptions and limitations associated with the inter-relationships among four widely used descriptors of surface fire behaviour and post-fire impacts in wildland fire science and management, namely Byram's fireline…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS

Chapter 8: Effects of fire on intangible cultural resources: moving toward a landscape approach

Welch
From the text ... 'As the implications of enabling fire to reclaim its roles in wildland ecosystems continue to unfold, we are learning about how we value, view, and treat public lands, forests, fire, archaeological and historical sites, and associated human communities. The…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Chapter 9: Implications of fire management on cultural resources

Timmons, DeBano, Ryan
From Wildland Fire Management Recommendations ... 'The protection of cultural resources during wildland fire is more challenging than for a prescribed burn. Treatment options available to mitigate the direct impacts from wildland fire include use of water, retardant, and fire…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Stand-level attributes of snowshoe hare (Lepus americanus) habitat in a post-sire trembling aspen (Populus tremuloides) chronosequence in central Yukon

Strong, Jung
Large-scale fires are anticipated to increase in frequency in the boreal forest under global climate warming scenarios. To understand concomitant responses by wildlife to fire-induced habitat changes, fecal pellet counts were used to assess Snowshoe Hare (Lepus americanus) use…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Chapter 2: Fire behavior and effects: principles for archaeologists

Ryan, Koerner
From the Conclusions ... 'Fires have impacted cultures for millennia and fire will continue to impact contemporary cultures as well as the remnants of past cultures. The challenge is to manage vagetation/fuels to minimize damage to contemporary cultures as well as the cultural…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Chapter 1: Effects of fire on cultural resources -- introduction

Ryan, Koerner, Lee, Siefkin
From the text ... 'This volume is intended to be used as a reference for both cultural resource specialists and fire managers during their planning processes. The intended audience includes resource and fire managers employed by public, tribal, and private land management…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Chapter 3: Fire effects on prehistoric ceramics

Rude, Jones
From the Conclusions ... 'Experimental studies focus mainly on the visual impacts of fire on potsherds. Fire effects on analytical properties of ceramics are less understood. Smoke blackening of sherds located at the ground surface is the most common fire effect noted. The…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Once Burned, Twice Shy: Repeat Fires Result in Black Spruce Regeneration Failure - webinar summary

Dr. Carissa Brown, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Sherbrooke, joined us for a webinar on February 23, 2012 (11:00 am to noon AKST) entitled 'Once burned, twice shy: Repeat fires result in black spruce regeneration failure.' Dr. Brown is currently studying plant…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Measures of forest fire smoke exposure and their associations with respiratory health outcomes

Henderson, Johnston
Exposure to forest fire smoke is episodic, which makes its health effects challenging to study. We review the newest contributions to a growing literature on acute respiratory outcomes.
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Wildland fire assessment tool user's guide 2.2

Tirmenstein, Long, Heward
The Wildland Fire Assessment Tool (WFAT) is a custom ArcMap toolbar that provides an interface between ArcGIS desktop software, FlamMap3 algorithms (Finney 2006) and First Order Fire Effects Model (FOFEM) algorithms (Reinhardt 2003) to produce predicted fire behavior and fire…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES

Economic analysis of fuel treatments

Mercer, Prestemon
The economics of wildfire is complicated because wildfire behavior depends on the spatial and temporal scale at which management decisions made, and because of uncertainties surrounding the results of management actions. Like the wildfire processes they seek to manage,…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES