Skip to main content

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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.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 126

Towards a new paradigm in fire severity research using dose-response experiments

Smith, Sparks, Kolden, Abatzoglou, Talhelm, Johnson, Boschetti, Lutz, Apostol, Yedinak, Tinkham, Kremens
Most landscape-scale fire severity research relies on correlations between field measures of fire effects and relatively simple spectral reflectance indices that are not direct measures of heat output or changes in plant physiology. Although many authors have highlighted…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

The ability of winter grazing to reduce wildfire size and fire-induced plant mortality was not demonstrated: a comment on Davies et al. (2015)

Smith, Talhelm, Kolden, Newingham, Adams, Cohen, Yedinak, Kremens
A recent study by Davies et al. sought to test whether winter grazing could reduce wildfire size, fire behaviour and intensity metrics, and fire-induced plant mortality in shrub-grasslands. The authors concluded that ungrazed rangelands may experience fire-induced mortality of…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Synthesising empirical results to improve predictions of post-wildfire runoff and erosion response

Shakesby, Moody, Martin, Robichaud
Advances in research into wildfire impacts on runoff and erosion have demonstrated increasing complexity of controlling factors and responses, which, combined with changing fire frequency, present challenges for modellers. We convened a conference attended by experts and…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

The net benefits of human-ignited wildfire forecasting: the case of tribal land units in the United States

Prestemon, Butry, Thomas
Research shows that some categories of human-ignited wildfires may be forecastable, owing to their temporal clustering, with the possibility that resources could be predeployed to help reduce the incidence of such wildfires. We estimated several kinds of incendiary and other…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Data, data everywhere: detecting spatial patterns in fine-scale ecological information collected across a continent

Potter, Koch, Oswalt, Iannone
Context. Fine-scale ecological data collected across broad regions are becoming increasingly available. Appropriate geographic analyses of these data can help identify locations of ecological concern.Objectives. We present one such approach, spatial association of scalable…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Prescribed fire alters surface activity and movement behavior of a terrestrial salamander

O'donnell, Thompson, Semlitsch
Prescribed fire has become a commonly used forest management tool for reducing the occurrence of severe wildfires, decreasing fuel loads and reestablishing the historic ecological influences of fire. Investigating population-level wildlife responses to prescribed fire is…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Fire disturbance effects on land surface albedo in Alaskan tundra

French, Whitley, Jenkins
The study uses satellite Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer albedo products (MCD43A3) to assess changes in albedo at two sites in the treeless tundra region of Alaska, both within the foothills region of the Brooks Range, the 2007 Anaktuvuk River Fire (ARF) and 2012…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Wildfire risk as a socioecological pathology

Fischer, Spies, Steelman, Moseley, Johnson, Bailey, Ager, Bourgeron, Charnley, Collins, Kline, Leahy, Littell, Millington, Nielsen-Pincus, Olsen, Paveglio, Roos, Steen-Adams, Stevens, Vukomanovic, White, Bowman
Wildfire risk in temperate forests has become a nearly intractable problem that can be characterized as a socioecological 'pathology': that is, a set of complex and problematic interactions among social and ecological systems across multiple spatial and temporal scales.…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Winter grazing decreases the probability of fire-induced mortality of bunchgrasses and may reduce wildfire size: a response to Smith et al. (this issue)

Davies, Boyd, Bates, Hulet
A recent commentary by Smith et al. (2016) argues that our study (Davies et al. 2016) contained methodological errors and lacked data necessary to support our conclusions, in particular that winter grazing may reduce the probability of fire-induced mortality of bunchgrasses.…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Mapping local effects of forest properties on fire risk across Canada

Bernier, Gauthier, Jean, Manka, Boulanger, Beaudoin, Guindon
Fire is a dominant mechanism of forest renewal in most of Canada's forests and its activity is predicted to increase over the coming decades. Individual fire events have been considered to be non-selective with regards to forest properties, but evidence now suggests otherwise.…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Biogeography of Alaska paper birch (Betula neoalaskana): latitudinal patterns in chemical defense and plant architecture

Stevens, Brown, Bothwell, Bryant
The latitudinal herbivory-defense hypothesis (LHDH) predicts that plants near the equator will be more heavily defended against herbivores than are plants at higher latitudes. Although this idea is widely found in the literature, recent studies have called this biogeographic…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Particulate air pollution from wildfires in the Western US under climate change

Liu, Mickley, Sulprizio, Dominici, Yue, Ebisu, Anderson, Khan, Bravo, Bell
Wildfire can impose a direct impact on human health under climate change. While the potential impacts of climate change on wildfires and resulting air pollution have been studied, it is not known who will be most affected by the growing threat of wildfires. Identifying…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

US exposure to multiple landscape stressors and climate change

Kerns, Kim, Kline, Day
We examined landscape exposure to wildfire potential, insects and disease risk, and urban and exurban development for the conterminous US (CONUS). Our analysis relied on spatial data used by federal agencies to evaluate these stressors nationally. We combined stressor data with…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Tree species richness decreases while species evenness increases with disturbance frequency in a natural boreal forest landscape

Yeboah, Chen, Kingston
Understanding species diversity and disturbance relationships is important for biodiversity conservation in disturbance-driven boreal forests. Species richness and evenness may respond differently with stand development following fire. Furthermore, few studies have…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Places where wildfire potential and social vulnerability coincide in the coterminous United States

Wigtil, Hammer, Kline, Mockrin, Stewart, Roper, Radeloff
The hazards-of-place model posits that vulnerability to environmental hazards depends on both biophysical and social factors. Biophysical factors determine where wildfire potential is elevated, whereas social factors determine where and how people are affected by wildfire. We…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Predicting large wildfires across western North America by modeling seasonal variation in soil water balance

Waring, Coops
A lengthening of the fire season, coupled with higher temperatures, increases the probability of fires throughout much of western North America. Although regional variation in the frequency of fires is well established, attempts to predict the occurrence of fire at a spatial…
Year: 2016
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Timing of fire relative to seed development may enable non-serotinous species to recolonize from the aerial seed banks of fire-killed trees

Michaletz, Johnson, Mell, Greene
The existence of non-serotinous, non-sprouting species in fire regimes where serotiny confers an adaptive advantage is puzzling, particularly when these species recruit poorly from soil seed banks or from burn edges. In this paper, white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) was…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Precipitation-driven decrease in wildfires in British Columbia

Meyn, Schmidtlein, Taylor, Girardin, Thonicke, Cramer
Trends of summer precipitation and summer temperature and their influence on trends in summer drought and area burned in British Columbia (BC) were investigated for the period 1920-2000. The complexity imposed by topography was taken into account by incorporating high spatial…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

The state of development of fire management decision support systems in America and Europe

Mavsar, González-Cabán, Varela
Forest fires affect millions of people worldwide, and cause major ecosystem and economic impacts at different scales. The management policies implemented to minimize the negative impacts of forest fires require substantial investment of financial, human and organizational…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

United States forest disturbance trends observed using Landsat time series

Masek, Goward, Kennedy, Cohen, Moisen, Schleeweis, Huang
Disturbance events strongly affect the composition, structure, and function of forest ecosystems; however, existing US land management inventories were not designed to monitor disturbance. To begin addressing this gap, the North American Forest Dynamics (NAFD) project has…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Mixed-severity fire regimes: how well are they represented by existing fire-regime classification systems?

Marcoux, Gergel, Daniels
Maps depicting historic fire regimes provide critical baselines for sustainable forest management and wildfire risk assessments. However, given our poor understanding of mixed-severity fire regimes, we asked if there may be considerable errors in fire-regime classification…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Diversity loss with persistent human disturbance increases vulnerability to ecosystem collapse

MacDougall, McCann, Gellner, Turkington
Long-term and persistent human disturbances have simultaneously altered the stability and diversity of ecological systems, with disturbances directly reducing functional attributes such as invasion resistance, while eliminating the buffering effects of high species diversity1-4…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Wildfire and forest harvest disturbances in the boreal forest leave different long-lasting spatial signatures

Lorente, Parsons, McIntire, Munson
Aims: Natural disturbances leave long-term legacies that vary among landscapes and ecosystem types, and which become integral parts of successional processes at a given location. As humans change land use, not only are immediate post-disturbance patterns altered, but the…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Diaspore characteristics and ecological adaptation of Bromus tectorum L. from different distribution regions

Liu, Zhang, Nowak, Dimeyeva
The invasion of nonnative plants is considered one of the main threats to the structure and function of North American ecosystems. Moreover, they can alter ecosystem processes and reduce biodiversity. In arid and semi-arid region of North America, the species of European annual…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS

Sensitivity of climate mitigation strategies to natural disturbances

Le Page, Hurtt, Thomson, Bond-Lamberty, Patel, Wise, Calvin, Kyle, Clarke, Edmonds, Janetos
The present and future concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide depends on both anthropogenic and natural sources and sinks of carbon. Most proposed climate mitigation strategies rely on a progressive transition to carbon-efficient technologies to reduce industrial emissions…
Year: 2013
Type: Document
Source: TTRS