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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.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 37
Trigg
Calculated values of precipitation effectiveness index and temperature efficiency index for 48 weather observation stations on the Alaska mainland are used to delineate areas that have different climatic subclassifications during the wildfire season of April through September.…
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Countryman
[no description entered]
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Rothermel
The Mann Gulch fire, which overran 16 firefighters in 1949, is analyzed to show its probable movement with respect to the crew. The firefighters were smoke-jumpers who had parachuted near the fire on August 5, 1949. While they were moving to a safer location, the fire blocked…
Year: 1993
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Douglas
The application of weather modification techniques as a fire control tool was field tested in Alaska during the summers of 1969 and 1970. The 1969 trial was primarily exploratory. Data gathered indicated clouds or cloud-systems exist in interior Alaska which are amenable to…
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Swift
A short history of the fire weather service is presented with a report on progress made under the 'Federal Plan for a National Fire Weather Service.' The highlights of the plan and its application to the requirements of forest and range management interests in Alaska are…
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Reifsnyder
From the text ... 'One area where great strides can be made is in the climatology of fire weather and its application to fire planning. Recent advances have been made in application of climatology to agriculture, and many of the same principles can be applied to forest fire…
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Smith
The need to develop improved methods for damage appraisal and a desire for better understanding of the economics of forest protection are illustrated with some data on forest fires in British Columbia, 1912-1968. Fire suppression and general protection costs have increased very…
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
McAlpine, Wotton
Fire managers currently use simple elliptical models to predict the perimeter of a fire when the fire starts from a single point. However, when examined closely wildland fire perimeters are highly irregular. We tested the hypothesis that a fire is actually fractal in nature and…
Year: 1993
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Brotak
Knowledge of fire behavior is critical for those who control wildfires. Fire managers must know spread rates and intensity-not just to eventually contain and extinguish the fire but also to keep their fire control personnel safe. Managers realize that weather is paramount in…
Year: 1993
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Orozco, Carrillo
Traditionally, in the Southwest, ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) red slash has not been treated with fire to meet resource objectives until all slash has fully cured, usually a 2-to-4-year wait. Waiting for slash to cure is still the widespread practice on most forests in the…
Year: 1993
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Wotton, Flannigan
The Canadian Climate Centre's General Circulation Model provides two 10-year data sets of simulated daily weather for a large array of gridpoints across North America. A subset of this data, comprised of only those points within the forested part of Canada, was selected for…
Year: 1993
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Latham, Rothermel
Fire managers in the Northwestern United States are often confronted by the problem of determining when precipitation might stop an ongoing fire. The possibility that a useful probability for fire-stopping precipitation could be developed from historical weather records was…
Year: 1993
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Burgan
The 1988 National Fire Danger System implements the Keetch-Byran Drought Index. This indexis output both as an estimator of drought in its own right and is used to modify fire danger calculations to account for deep drying of dead vefetation and duff. A method initializes this…
Year: 1993
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Bessie, Johnson
Surface fire intensity (kW m[-1]) and crown fire initiation were predicted using Rothermel's (1972) and Van Wagner's (1977) models, with fuel data from 47 subalpine conifer stands and 35 years of daily weather (moisture contents and windspeeds). Rothermel's intensity equations…
Year: 1993
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Simard
Implementation of Forest Fire Weather Forecasting requires the development for a procedure for obtaining representative wind speed observations for large areas. In this paper, a procedure is outlined whereby surface observations can be used to obtain area averages. The procedure…
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Harpster, Douglas
'...Whether in controlling the buildup index or in supressing fires once they are in progress, the techniques of weather modification must be considered -- at least at this point in their development -- as a potential supplement to other fire control techniques already in use.'
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Fosberg
'Fuel moistures are among the most important environmental factors required in fire danger rating evaluations. Direct observations of fuel moisture such as with fuel sticks or other analog devices are desirable for evaluation of the current fire danger because they integrate all…
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: TTRS
Serreze, Box, Barry, Walsh
Synoptic activity for the Arctic is examined for the period 1952-1989 using the National Meteorological Center sea level pressure data set. Winter cyclone activity is most common near Iceland, between Svalbard and Scandinavia, the Norwegian and Kara seas, Baffin Bay and the…
Year: 1993
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Beer
The results of a number of laboratory tests of wind-driven fires indicate the existence of a characteristic wind speed, U'. The form of the fire spread (V) as a function of mid-flame wind speed (U) differs above and below this characteristic speed. The scatter in field data is…
Year: 1993
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Fosberg, Deeming
Procedures for calculating the moisture contents of 1- and 10-hour timelag fuels have been developed based on theoretical calculations of the rate of moisture transport in wood. The 1 -hour timelag calculation is superior to fine fuel moisture calculations developed previously…
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Countryman
'If it hadn't been for that damn fire whirl we would have caught it at 5 acres,' yelled the fire boss to his assistant as they watched the fire crews mop up the final smoldering spots in a 250-acre brush fire. The fire had been contained at about 5 acres, and the crew had just…
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, TTRS
Countryman
'Humidity' is an eight-letter word that is heard around fire camps and on the fireline almost as often as the more widely known four-letter words. Most firefighters know that humidity has something to do with moisture in the air. If it is low, they expect difficulty in…
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Houze, Jr.
Cloud dynamics
[This publication is referenced in the "Synthesis of knowledge of extreme fire behavior: volume I for fire managers" (Werth et al 2011).]
Year: 1993
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Kuettner
It is now well known that parallel cloud bands are widespread in the earth's atmosphere. Observations from manned and unmanned spacecraft and from high-altitude aircraft in connection with soundings from ships and ground stations have shed light on their origin. These and a…
Year: 1971
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES
Etling, Brown
Roll vortices may be loosely defined as quasi two-dimensional organized large eddies with their horizontal axis extending through the whole planetary boundary layer (PBL). Their indirect manifestation is most obvious in so-called cloud streets as can be seen in numerous…
Year: 1993
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES