Tree and shrub encroachment is common in areas where fire has been excluded, and has become a focal point of many oak management and restoration programs.
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Fire in chaparral is a natural process, but only when it occurs within the range of conditions represented by its fire regime.
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Here, Jon Keeley and his colleagues document an example of immaturity risk for population decline in knobcone pine (Pinus attenuate), a rare, serotinous, obligate-seeding pine species.
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Four decades after being type converted to a non native grassland, the soil and hydrology of the USFS San Dimas Experimental Forest in southern California was compared to the adjacent, natural chaparral.
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Researchers studied the human influence on fire regimes at the WUI using California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) data from a majority of counties in the state, coupled with associated housing and other human infrastructure data.
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At two sites in Mono County, California, two thinning treatments were compared: machine mastication versus cut/pile/burn by hand crews using chain saws.
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Syphard, Brennan and Keeley asked how the size of the defensible space zone affected fire outcomes using a dataset of 687,869 homes with their property boundaries.
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The Fire Science Exchange Network was initiated by the Joint Fire Science Program. Guidelines to be effective "boundary organizations" are discussed.
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The authors sought to determine how mixed conifer forests under an active fire regime differ from forests under fire suppression.
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Stoof et al. discusses a prescribed fire experiment in Portugal on soil characteristics.
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This paper offers a reconstruction of historic fire regimes and forest age structures in a mixed-‐ conifer forest in the Klamath Mountains of northern California, demonstrating the historic importance of temporal and spatial controls on fire in the area, and providing critical context for current restoration and management activities.
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North and Hurteau (2011) investigated the forest carbon tradeoffs of wildfire in treated and untreated mixed-‐conifer forests, as well as the carbon cost of implementing fuels reduction treatments.
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Here, Walter Johnson observes the effects of 20 years of grazing and browsing by cattle and deer on chaparral re-‐growth in the Sierra Nevada foothills
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Callaway and Davis were able "to quantify dynamic chaparral in vegetation patterns and the relative importance of fire, livestock grazing, topography, and substrate in grassland, coastal sage scrub, chaparral, and oak woodland distribution in central coastal California.”
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The authors surveyed administrators of regulatory and voluntary wildfire reduction programs in 25 US states to gain information on how they are organized, what they are trying to accomplish, what obstacles existed in their implementation, and how well they may be working.
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This paper uses tree ring data to develop climate and fire chronologies connections.
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Management strategies to reduce fire spread and severity typically involve targeted reduction of forest fuels through some combination of mechanical, hand, and/or burning treatments. A 2012 study by Safford et al. evaluates the effectiveness of such forest fuel treatments in mixed conifer and yellow pine forests in the California National Forests.
Read MoreIn the April issue of Ecological Applications, USGS scientists Kyle Merriam (currently with the USFS) and Dr. Jon Keeley and USFS colleague Dr. Jan Beyers report that an unintended result of these fuel modification programs can be the introduction and spread of nonnative invasive plant species.
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Two studies led by USGS and the Conservation Biology Institute have examined the factors affecting fuel break effectiveness in national forests.
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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.
Link to another exchange:
