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 The database provides a listing of fire research publications relevant to Alaska and a venue for sharing unpublished agency reports and works in progress that are not normally found in the published literature.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 53
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
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
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
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
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
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