JFSP Fire Science Exchange Network
A recent paper by Scott Stephens and co-authors asserts that conservation of western forests is still possible, and describes sensible, evidence-based strategies to improve forest ecosystem resilience.
Read MoreThis study compares post-drought forests to historical forests to understand if the recent tree mortality event shifted forests closer to or further from resilient conditions.
Photo credit: Historic conditions in a ponderosa pine stand circa 1917. Source: Sierra National Forest Photo HP0313
Read MoreGiven the changing disturbance regimes and climate, there is a critical need to take decisive and extensive actions in the next 1-2 decades to conserve Sierra Nevada forests. This synthesis provides a summary of how climate change and fire are impacting our Sierra Nevada Mixed Conifer forests and how active management can help mitigate some of these impacts.
Read MoreIn our changing world, community change may be a resilience response indicating a process of adaptation rather than of failure. Falk and colleagues (2019) argue that resilience goals should be updated to better apply to 21st century ecosystems.
Read MoreThis research suggests that collaborative learning among stakeholders (aka knowledge coproduction) would be a good way to develop context specific resiliency metrics and goals, making the term more useful by operationalizing it.
Read MoreThis paper compares tree mortality patterns in treated (thinned and/or burned) forested stands to untreated stands and how these treatments affect forest response to drought.
Read MoreBoth climatic and land use factors will have an effect on long-term spatial and temporal patterns of fire and structure loss within California.
Read MoreTo test the Interval Squeeze Model concept on real, fire sensitive woody species, these authors created a process-based model of a plant population that could be used for any serotinous, fire-killed species.
Read MorePresenter: Janet Franklin (UC Riverside)
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Presented at the 3rd California Chaparral Symposium: Global Change and the Vulnerability of Chaparral Ecosystems. May 14-16, 2018. Arcadia, CA.
Presenter: Stephen Davis (Pepperdine Univ.)
View Powerpoint PDF >
Presented at the 3rd California Chaparral Symposium: Global Change and the Vulnerability of Chaparral Ecosystems. May 14-16, 2018. Arcadia, CA.
View recorded presentation>
Presented at the 3rd California Chaparral Symposium: Global Change and the Vulnerability of Chaparral Ecosystems. May 14-16, 2018. Arcadia, CA.
In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers with the Conservation Biology Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey showed that, across the U.S. on landscapes dominated by humans, climate has played a relatively small role in determining wildfire activity.
Read MoreFuture climate-induced shifts in fire regimes and plant distributions could uncouple vegetation from the fire regimes for which they are adapted. The brief discusses changes to fire-adapted plant communities under modeled climate change scenarios and their implications on the Kaibab Plateau landscape.
Read MoreFor desert shrubland species that have evolved without fire, the introduction of a grass-fire, positive feedback cycle is particularly problematic. This brief discusses work done by researchers who modeled the grass-fire cycle for non-fire-adapted desert shrublands under three sets of climate conditions.
Read MoreIn an era of concern over climate change, it's important to understand how different kinds of fire-adapted of ecosystems in California may respond to climate change in relation to fire. This study categorized Californian ecosystems into three types and discusses how each may be affected by climate change and fire.
Read MoreThe likely effects of drought associated with climate change in the United States have recently been synthesized by James M. Vose, James S. Clark, Charles H. Luce and Toral Patel-Weynand. Here we summarize their conclusions as they apply to drought and fire and provide examples of how these conditions are affecting different ecosystems in California.
Read MoreIn a review article by Jon Keeley and Alex Syphard, examples from California show that fire regimes are sensitive to geographic and seasonal variation in the climate signal and that many factors will confound the ability to model future conditions.
Read MoreThis study focuses on climate change and increasing human populations as two potential causes of the increasing number and size of wildfire in the western US.
Read MoreThe authors examined the relationship between fuels and fire behavior by examining how fire suppression has affected fire severity in different forest ecosystems in California. The authors tested the hypothesis that fire behavior is limited by fuel availability in some California forests where climatic conditions during the fire season are nearly always conducive to burning and the primary limiting factor for fire ignition and spread is the presence of sufficient fuel.
Read MoreResearch Brief/Management Consideration. One topic that is generating a great deal of interest among fire management professionals as California enters the fall prescribed fire season is whether we should be burning during this fourth year of drought. This brief discusses what managers should consider before doing a prescribed burn.
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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 sponsored by Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP).
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