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The Southwest Fire Science Consortium is partnering with FRAMES to help fire managers access important fire science information related to the Southwest's top ten fire management issues.

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Displaying 1 - 10 of 548

Wildfire probability estimated from recent climate and fine fuels across the big sagebrush region
Holdrege, Schlaepfer, Palmquist, Crist, Doherty, Lauenroth, Remington, Riley, Short, Tull, Wiechman, Bradford
Background: Wildfire is a major proximate cause of historical and ongoing losses of intact big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata Nutt.) plant communities and declines in sagebrush obligate wildlife species. In recent decades, fire return intervals…
Year: 2024
Type: Document

Future direction of fuels management in sagebrush rangelands
Shinneman, Strand, Pellant, Abatzoglou, Brunson, Glenn, Heinrichs, Sadegh, Vaillant
Sagebrush ecosystems in the United States have been declining since EuroAmerican settlement, largely due to agricultural and urban development, invasive species, and altered fire regimes, resulting in loss of biodiversity and wildlife habitat. To…
Year: 2023
Type: Document

Exotic herbivores and fire energy drive standing herbaceous biomass but do not alter compositional patterns in a semiarid savanna ecosystem
Preiss, Wonkka, McGranahan, Lodge, Dickinson, Kavanagh, Starns, Tolleson, Treadwell, Twidwell, Rogers
Questions: Fire regime alterations are pushing open ecosystems worldwide past tipping points where alternative steady states characterized by woody dominance prevail. This reduces the frequency and intensity of surface fires, further limiting their…
Year: 2023
Type: Document

Missing the mark: Effectiveness and funding in community wildfire risk reduction
Dale, Barrett
[Executive Summary] Wildfire risk has many dimensions – for example, fires can impact ecosystems and wildlife, and smoke increases greenhouse gas emissions. However, this research report is narrowly focused on the effectiveness of specific…
Year: 2023
Type: Document

Connecting dryland fine-fuel assessments to wildfire exposure and natural resource values at risk
Wells, Munson, Villarreal, Sesnie, Laushman
Background: Wildland fire in arid and semi-arid (dryland) regions can intensify when climatic, biophysical, and land-use factors increase fuel load and continuity. To inform wildland fire management under these conditions, we developed high-…
Year: 2023
Type: Document

Region-specific remote-sensing models for predicting burn severity, basal area change, and canopy cover change following fire in the southwestern United States
Reiner, Baker, Wahlberg, Rau, Birch
Estimates of burn severity and forest change following wildfire are used to determine changes in forest cover, fuels, carbon stocks, soils, wildlife habitat, and to evaluate fuel and fire management strategies and effectiveness. However, current…
Year: 2022
Type: Document

Invasive Annual Grasses Management
Burgiel, Bauer, Franklin, Maestas
Invasive annual grasses pose ecological and economic challenges for invasive species managers and agricultural producers across the West. On this Working Lands, Working Communities Initiative webinar, speakers will examine management tools and…
Year: 2022
Type: Media

Short-term benefits of prescribed fire to bird communities of dry forests
Saab, Latif, Block, Dudley
Background Low-severity prescribed fire is an important tool to manage fire-maintained forests across North America. In dry conifer forests of the western USA, prescribed fire is often used to reduce fuel loads in forests characterized historically…
Year: 2022
Type: Document

Fire Ecology and management of spotted knapweed, diffuse knapweed, and yellow starthistle – Research Brief
Innes
Spotted knapweed (Centaurea stoebe subsp. micranthos), diffuse knapweed (C. diffusa), and yellow starthistle (C. solstitialis) are nonnative, invasive forbs that can displace native plants, reduce native plant diversity, reduce native wildlife…
Year: 2022
Type: Document

Abundance of mites, but not of collembolans or nematodes, is reduced by restoration of a Pinus ponderosa forest with thinning, mastication, and prescribed fire
Gibson, Johnson, Laturno, Parmenter, Antoninka
Thinning, mastication, and prescribed fire are restoration treatments frequently employed in unnaturally dense second-growth Pinus ponderosa forests of the Western United States. Although a goal of these treatments is to restore ecosystem structure…
Year: 2022
Type: Document