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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.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 35
Kintisch
Scientists and firefighters ponder new ways to predict the spread of wildfire as the U.S. West faces ever more potent blazes.
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Butler, Ottmar, Rupp, Jandt, Miller, Howard, Schmoll, Theisen, Vihnanek, Jimenez
Mechanical (e.g., shearblading) and manual (e.g., thinning) fuel treatments have become the preferred strategy of many fire managers and agencies for reducing fire hazard in boreal forests. This study attempts to characterize the effectiveness of four fuel treatments through…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Adams
Global evidence posits that we are on the cusp of fire-driven 'tipping points' in some of the world's most important woody biomes including savannah woodlands, temperate forests, and boreal forests, with consequences of major changes in species dominance and vegetation type. The…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Alexander, Vaillant, Cruz
This workshop was held in conjunction with the 4th Fire Behavior and Fuels Conference, 18-22 February 2013, Raleigh, NC. The goal of this workshop was to provide participants with a summary of the results emanating from the Joint Fire Science Program sponsored project "Crown…
Year: 2013
Type: Media
Source: FRAMES
Peterson, Hyer, Wang
A statistical model, based on numerical weather prediction (NWP), is developed to predict the subsequent day's satellite observations of fire activity in the North American boreal forest during the fire season (24-h forecast). In conjunction with the six components of the…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Lu, Sokolik
We investigate the influence of wildfire smoke aerosols on cloud microphysics and precipitation using a coupled aerosol-cloud microphysics-meteorology model WRF-Chem-SMOKE. The Wildfire Automated Biomass Burning Algorithm products are used to compute 'online' hourly size- and…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Abatzoglou, Barbero, Nauslar
Santa Ana winds (SAW) are among the most notorious fire-weather conditions in the United States and are implicated in wildfire and wind hazards in Southern California. This study employs large-scale reanalysis data to diagnose SAW through synoptic-scale dynamic and thermodynamic…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
de Groot, Flannigan, Stocks
Wildland fire regimes are primarily driven by climate/weather, fuels and people. All of these factors are dynamic and their variable interactions create a mosaic of fire regimes around the world. Climate change will have a substantial impact on future fire regimes in many global…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Summer 2012 saw records fall for intensity of drought and number, size, and cost of wildfires in the Central and Western United States, and the climate forecast calls for more of the same in the near and distant future. When wildfire breaks out, emergency responders decide their…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Moody, Shakesby, Robichaud, Cannon, Martin
Research into post-wildfire effects began in the United Statesmore than 70 years ago and only later extended to other parts of the world. Post-wildfire responses are typically transient, episodic, variable in space and time, dependent on thresholds, and involve multiple…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Coen, Cameron, Michalakes, Riggan, Yedinak
A wildland fire behavior module (WRF-Fire) was integrated into the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) public domain numerical weather prediction model. The fire module is a surface fire behavior model that is two-way coupled with the atmospheric model. Near-surface winds…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Jandt
A 1-page research brief summarizes a recently published article by Canadian fire scientist Mike Flannigan of the University of Alberta. Dr. Flannigan is well-known in Alaska fire management circles due to his contributions to boreal forest wildfire studies and the Canadian large…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Boiffin, Munson
An emerging paradigm regarding vegetation response to climate warming is that the interaction of weather extremes and disturbance will trigger abrupt changes in ecosystem types by overcoming resilience of dominant species. Black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.)) ecosystems are…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Achtemeier
A cellular automata fire model represents 'elements' of fire by autonomous agents. A few simple algebraic expressions substituted for complex physical and meteorological processes and solved iteratively yield simulations for 'super-diffusive' fire spread and coupled surface-…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Liu, Goodrick, Stanturf
This study investigates trends in wildfire potential in the continental United States under a changing climate. Fire potential is measured by the Keetch-Byram Drought Index (KBDI), which is determined by daily maximum temperature and precipitation. The impact of relative…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Flannigan, Cantin, de Groot, Wotton, Newbery, Gowman
We used Cumulative Severity Rating (CSR), a weather-based fire danger metric, to examine the potential influence of climate change on global fire season severity. The potential influence of climate change on fire season length was also addressed. We used three General…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
de Groot, Flannigan, Cantin
Fire disturbance is a primary driver of forest dynamics across the circumpolar boreal region, although there are major differences in continental fire regimes. Relatively infrequent, high intensity crown fires dominate North American boreal forests, and low to moderate intensity…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Dai
Historical records of precipitation, streamflow and drought indices all show increased aridity since 1950 over many land areas. Analyses of model-simulated soil moisture, drought indices and precipitation-minus-evaporation7 suggest increased risk of drought in the twenty-first…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Ryan, Vose
Climate profoundly shapes forests. Forest species composition, productivity, availability of goods and services, disturbance regimes, and location on the landscape are all regulated by climate. Much research attention has focused on the problem of projecting the response of…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Yu, Zhong, Bian, Heilman, Charney
The Haines index (HI) is a fire-weather index that is widely used as an indicator of the potential for dry, low-static-stability air in the lower atmosphere to contribute to erratic fire behavior or large fire growth. This study examines the interannual variability of HI over…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Richardson
Cloud-to-Ground (CG) lightning, in particular when it occurs in dry thunderstorms, is a major cause of wildfire initiation each year. A thunderstorm is considered dry when little to no precipitation reaches the ground. There have been several studies that have developed methods…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Pausas, Ribeiro
Aim: It has been suggested that on a global scale, fire activity changes along the productivity/aridity gradient following a humped relationship, i.e. the intermediate fire-productivity hypothesis. This relation should be driven by differing relative roles of the main fire…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
FireFamilyPlus (FFP) is a PC-based software system for summarizing and analyzing historical daily fire weather observations and computing fire danger indices based on the National Fire Danger Rating System (NFDRS) or the Canadian Fire Danger Rating System (CFDRS). Fireoccurrence…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Suzuki, Manzello, Hayashi
Wildfires that spread into communities, commonly referred to as Wildland-Urban Interface fires (WUI), are a significant international problem. Post-fire damage studies have suggested for some time that firebrands are a significant cause of structure ignition in WUI fires, yet…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Keane, Cary, Flannigan, Parsons, Davies, King, Li, Bradstock, Gill
An assessment of the relative importance of vegetation change and disturbance as agents of landscape change under current and future climates would (1) provide insight into the controls of landscape dynamics, (2) help inform the design and development of coarse scale spatially…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS