This 2003 study used aerial photos taken between 1939 and 1997 to quantify vegetation change in the landscape mosaic of grasslands, shrublands, woodlands and forests of the San Francisco Bay Area.
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This brief discussed a 2012 study that indicates less than 20% of national forest and national park lands in the Sierra Nevada are experiencing fuels treatments needed to mitigate continuing degradation from either the lack of fire or wildfire burning at high severity.
Read MoreThis brief summarizes the current state of knowledge on the use of fire as a tool to manage invasive plants in wildlands. The authors of two publications discuss risks and challenges of conducting prescribed burns, types of systems and circumstances in which burning may be effective for the management of invasive plants, complexities of fire and plant community interactions, impacts of prescribed burning on the broader plant community and the soil, and comprehensive monitoring plans.
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Read MoreChaparral and coastal sage scrub have a higher number of rare and endangered plants in their communities than expected based on total land area occupied by these two shrubland types.
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Between the 1940s and the 1970s, converting chaparral to grasslands had become acceptable and widely practiced in western states. How these type conversions affected vertebrate diversity were addressed in this study.
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The soil characteristics and historical records of the Blue Canyon brush field were reviewed.
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In the interest of increasing browse for deer populations on California chaparral lands, a brush manipulation program was conducted by the California Department of Fish & Game (CDFG) from 1955 to 1960. The results of this project are discussed in this brief.
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As environmental stewards, rednecks should be credited for conserving forests with landscape-scale burning in the interest of improved hunting, tick control and fun
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In a U.S.G.S Report the authors discuss that an unintended results of fuel modification programs can be the introduction and spread of nonnative invasive plant species.
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It took many years of relatively haphazard firefighting and political battles to reach the Clar Plan (Fire Plan of 1940), a statewide fire control plan implemented by the California Division of Forestry.
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In 1955, four agronomists began a long term project to study “a major problem in the conversion of chaparral to grassland – the selection of adapted grass and legume species to seed areas once dominated by brush.”
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Observations from the 2007 wildfire season in southern California led to several important implications for managing fire risk under these extreme environmental and social conditions.
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This 1967 handbook recommends a standardized type-conversion process for Chaparral in five steps.
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The Fuel Break Program was a historic, systematic effort to type convert mosaics linked by firelines with the goal of containing and/or controlling southern California chaparral wildfire.
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These historic Angeles National Forest fires were almost all caused by people. At first, these ignitions were tolerated, but as people witnessed more flooding & erosion, they clamored for government intervention.
Read MoreAuthors of this paper present quantitative information on the differences in stand structure, fuel loading, and fire behavior in current and reconstructed riparian and upland areas in the Sierra Nevada.
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With four different goat-grazing treatments at different stocking rates, the authors explored the effects of goat-grazing on type-converted shrub systems in Arizona.
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A USGS study reports that after the 2003 fires, burned coastal sage scrub (CSS) plots displayed a significant shift in the overall community structure of ground foraging ant species.
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In southern California, the slopes are famous for producing high sediment yields following fires. The authors showed that large volumes of sediment are released when the “dams” are burned in wildfires in these ecosystems.
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This paper summarized the results of 200 social science studies primarily from western North America to identify key lessons. They present 25 key research needs.
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The California Fire Science Consortium is divided into 4 geographic regions and 1 wildland-urban interface (WUI) team. Statewide coordination of this program is based at UC Berkeley.
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This regional Fire Science Exchange is one of 15 regional fire science exchanges.
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