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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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.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 107

Common-interest community agreements on private lands provide opportunity and scale for wildlife management

Powell
Private lands are critical to conservation planning for wildlife, worldwide. Agriculture subsidies, tax incentives, and conservation easements have been successfully used as tools to convert cropland to native vegetation. However, uncertain economies threaten the sustainability…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

An adaptive composite density estimator for k-tree sampling

Magnussen, Fehrman, Platt
Density estimators for k-tree distance sampling are sensitive to the amount of extra Poisson variance in distances to the kth tree. To lessen this sensitivity, we propose an adaptive composite estimator (COM). In simulated sampling from 16 test populations, a three-component…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

An estimate of avian mortality at communication towers in the United States and Canada

Longcore, Rich, Mineau, MacDonald, Bert, Sullivan, Mutrie, Gauthreaux, Avery, Crawford, Manville, Travis, Drake
Avian mortality at communication towers in the continental United States and Canada is an issue of pressing conservation concern. Previous estimates of this mortality have been based on limited data and have not included Canada. We compiled a database of communication towers in…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

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

Plant toxins and trophic cascades alter fire regime and succession on a boreal forest landscape

Feng, Alfaro-Murillo, DeAngelis, Schmidt, Barga, Zheng, Ahmad Tamrin, Olson, Glaser, Kielland, Chapin, Bryant
Two models were integrated in order to study the effect of plant toxicity and a trophic cascade on forest succession and fire patterns across a boreal landscape in central Alaska. One of the models, ALFRESCO, is a cellular automata model that stochastically simulates transitions…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

The hazards of staging vehicles in the black: two incidents

Keller
From the text ... 'In two recent incidents that occurred with different fire agencies in separate parts of the country, fire vehicles that were parked in the black and left unattended caught fire. At the time of ignitions, the focus was elsewhere: both crews were engaged in…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Let it burn: prescribed fires pose little danger to forest ecology, study says

Yang
Fighting fire with fire has been given the green light by a new study of techniques used to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. And with a rise in wildfires predicted in many parts of the country, researchers say controlled burns and other treatments to manage this risk…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

The effects of forest fuel-reduction treatments in the United States

Stephens, McIver, Boerner, Fettig, Fontaine, Hartsough, Kennedy, Schwilk
The current conditions of many seasonally dry forests in the western and southern United States, especially those that once experienced low- to moderate-intensity fire regimes, leave them uncharacteristically susceptible to high-severity wildfire. Both prescribed fire and its…
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

Natural disturbance emulation in boreal forest ecosystem management -- theories, strategies, and a comparison with conventional even-aged management

Kuuluvainen, Grenfell
Natural disturbance emulation (NDE) has been proposed as a general approach to ecologically sustainable forest management. We reviewed the concepts, theories, and strategies related to NDE in boreal forest management. We also reviewed publications that discussed NDE in the…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Modelling firebrand transport in wildfires using HIGRAD/FIRETEC

Koo, Linn, Pagni, Edminster
Firebrand transport is studied for disc and cylindrical firebrands by modelling their trajectories with a coupled-physics fire model, HIGRAD/FIRETEC. Through HIGRAD/FIRETEC simulations, the size of possible firebrands and travelled distances are analysed to assess spot ignition…
Year: 2012
Type: Document
Source: FRAMES, 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