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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.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 49
Bella
Vegetation cover and structure was measured in five plots in each of three bluejoint reedgrass (Calamagrostis canadensis L.) treatment plot sites (Griner, Mile 149, Kenai, Figure 1, Table 1) on the western Kenai Peninsula on August 1st, 2013. Plots were circular one meter area…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
McCaffrey, Toman, Stidham, Shindler
As with other aspects of natural-resource management, the approach to managing wildland fires has evolved over time as scientific understanding has advanced and the broader context surrounding management decisions has changed. Prior to 2000 the primary focus of most fire…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Kreye, Varner, Dugaw, Cao, Szecsei, Engber
The ignition and combustion of forest floor duff are poorly understood yet have been linked to soil heating and overstory tree mortality in many temperate coniferous forests. Research to date has focused on the characteristics of duff that facilitate ignition and spread,…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Hudak, Ottmar, Vihnanek, Brewer, Smith, Morgan
White ash results from the complete combustion of surface fuels, making it a logically simple retrospective indicator of surface fuel consumption. However, the strength of this relationship has been neither tested nor adequately demonstrated with field measurements. We measured…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, 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
Andersen, Chapman, Artz
Even though large extents of boreal peatlands are still in a pristine condition, especially in North America, extensive areas have been affected by natural or anthropogenic disturbances that change some of the systems from being sinks to sources of carbon dioxide and shift the…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Urbanek
Soil structure is often severely affected during high intensity burning, while low intensity prescribed burning has often been thought to have a low or neutral effect on soil aggregation. In this issue of Plant and Soil, (Albalasmeh et al. 2012) report a novel mechanism of…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Toledo, Sorice, Kreuter
Fire suppression in grassland systems that are adapted to episodic fire has contributed to the recruitment of woody species in grasslands worldwide. Even though the ecology of restoring these fire prone systems back to grassland states is becoming clearer, a major hurdle to the…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Ryan, Knapp, Varner
Whether ignited by lightning or by Native Americans, fire once shaped many North American ecosystems. Euro-American settlement and 20th Century fire suppression practices drastically altered historic fire regimes, leading to excessive fuel accumulation and uncharacteristically…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Information about status and trend of wildlife habitat is important for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service to accomplish its mission and meet its legal requirements. As the steward of 193 million acres (ac) of Federal land, the Forest Service needs to evaluate…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Wade
Moisture is the overriding factor governing fuel flammability. It determines whether ignition will take place and to what depth the forest floor will be consumed. If one uses enough torch mix, he/she can ignite the immediate area, but if fuel moisture is much above 22% in pine…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Wade
Achieving natural resource objectives typically requires the application of periodic fire because fire is truly THE ECOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE! But how does one measure success or failure? Determining how close a fire came to meeting your objective(s) is a difficult but crucial part…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Wade
The prescribed burner has numerous tools at his/her disposal to start fire. Ground ignition devices continue to be developed and refined and include a wide range of options from kitchen matches to state-of-the-art hand-held 'ping-pong ball' launchers. This fact sheet describes…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Wade
The term 'backfire' refers to a commonly used method for prescribed burning in which the igniter sets a line of fire that slowly backs into the wind. This technique should not be confused with the colloquial use of the term 'backfire' for 'suppression fire,' which refers to any…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Toledo, Sorice, Kreuter
Fire suppression in grassland systems that are adapted to episodic fire has contributed to the recruitment of woody species in grasslands worldwide. Even though the ecology of restoring these fire prone systems back to grassland states is becoming clearer, a major hurdle to the…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
In October, the 12th International Wildland Fire Safety Summit in Sydney, Australia brought together students of fire from all over the world to explore new approaches in wildland fire safety. Participants attended from the USA, Switzerland, Hong Kong, France, New Zealand and…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Hart, Luckai
1) Charcoal plays an important role in soil function and carbon storage in fire-prone ecosystems. Charcoal is present in most boreal forest soils as a result of naturally recurring wildfires, which convert 0·7-2% of biomass to charcoal. In boreal forests, charcoal represents 8-…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
While North American ecosystems vary widely in their ecology and natural historical fire regimes, they are unified in benefitting from prescribed fire when judiciously applied with the goal of maintaining and restoring native ecosystem composition, structure, and function. On a…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Mutch
For the 2012 fire season, a USFS 'fire ban' directive raised concerns that a return to a 'suppression'-only response to fire would undermine long-term fire management strategies and policies. Bob Mutch responds with a call for communicating our fire expertise.
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
These proceedings summarize the results of a symposium designed to address current issues of agencies with wildland fire protection responsibility at the federal and state levels in the United States as well as agencies in the international community. The topics discussed at the…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Ryan, Knapp, Varner
Whether ignited by lightning or by Native Americans, fire once shaped many North American ecosystems. Euro-American settlement and 20th-century fire suppression practices drastically altered historic fire regimes, leading to excessive fuel accumulation and uncharacteristically…
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
The intent of this document is to provide prescribed fie practitioners, planners and agency administrators with a brief summary of the major themes that emerged from escaped prescribed fires in 2012. This summary is not an all-inclusive recounting of these individual escapes.…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Vaillant, Ager, Anderson, Miller
Fuel management planning can be a complex problem that is assisted by fire behavior modeling and geospatial analyses. Fuel management often is a particularly complicated process in which the benefits and potential impacts of fuel treatments need to be demonstrated in the context…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Martinson, Omi
We employed meta-analysis and information theory to synthesize findings reported in the literature on the effects of fuel treatments on subsequent fire intensity and severity. Data were compiled from 19 publications that reported observed fire responses from 62 treated versus…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES