Climate change is narrowing and shifting prescribed fire windows

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Climate change is narrowing and shifting prescribed fire windows

In this study, the authors used observed weather and climate data, as well as climate model simulations, to project shifts in the frequency and seasonality of burn windows in the Western United States. Real-world burn plans were used to calculate median upper and lower prescription values for weather, climate, and vegetation parameters. These upper and lower median values determined days that were suitable for prescribed fire (RxDay) at a given location, in both the past and in a warmer climate future.

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The century-long shadow of fire exclusion: Historical data reveal early and lasting effects of fire regime change on contemporary forest composition

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The century-long shadow of fire exclusion: Historical data reveal early and lasting effects of fire regime change on contemporary forest composition

This study explores the effects of historical logging on tree regeneration and successive effects on stand development under a history of fire exclusion. The authors leveraged a silvicultural experiment from the 1920s in the Sierra Nevada mixed-conifer forest of the Stanislaus-Tuolumne Experimental Forest to test if silvicultural objectives of increasing pine stocking rates were met. Combining historical (pre- and post-logging in 1928-1929) and contemporary tree regeneration data along with overstory and microsite conditions, they assessed the impact of logging on pine decline.

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Trends in prescribed fire weather windows from 2000 to 2022 in California

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Trends in prescribed fire weather windows from 2000 to 2022 in California

This study analyzed a 2-km hourly gridded weather dataset over a 23-year period to investigate the influence of climatological trends on prescribed fire weather windows. The authors explored how prescribed fire windows changed over this period for two California counties: Sonoma County near the coast and Plumas County in the Sierra Nevada, which contrast in land ownership types, vegetation, and climate. These counties represent diverse prescribed fire considerations in regions where recent catastrophic wildfire has drawn interest from land managers. Using burn prescriptions written by experienced local fire practitioners, the authors identified the degree of weather-driven change in prescribed fire opportunities for these two distinct areas within California.

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Degradation and restoration of Indigenous California black oak (Quercus kelloggii) stands in the northern Sierra Nevada

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Degradation and restoration of Indigenous California black oak (Quercus kelloggii) stands in the northern Sierra Nevada

This study summarizes Indigenous oral traditions, assesses current and historical forest structure, and measures fire effects of the 2021 Dixie Fire to understand the state of forests in the northern Sierra Nevada with cultural significance to the Mountain Maidu. Oral traditions of the Mountain Maidu cultural burning practices were passed down through generations and were incorporated into this work by one of the authors. The focal site of the study was the Plumas National Forest expanded on University of California, and data included Berkeley forest inventory plots, a California black oak census, and dendroecological fire history records. Regional forest conditions were assessed historically via a 1924 forest inventory, while current conditions were quantified through data from the Forest Inventory Analysis program.

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Forest restoration and fuels reduction work: Different pathways for achieving success in the Sierra Nevada

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Forest restoration and fuels reduction work: Different pathways for achieving success in the Sierra Nevada

This paper examines a 20-year forest restoration study in the northern Sierra Nevada looking at changes in forest structure and composition, fuel accumulation, modeled fire behavior, intertree competition, and economics resulting from four treatment regimes: multiple applications of prescribed fire (Fire), multiple mechanical restoration thinnings (Mech), multiple mechanical restoration thinnings followed by prescribed fire (Mech + Fire), and untreated controls

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Biogeomorphic Responses to Wildfire in Fluvial Ecosystems

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Biogeomorphic Responses to Wildfire in Fluvial Ecosystems

Biogeomorphic Responses to Wildfire in Fluvial Ecosystems draws together interdisciplinary studies and reviews that highlight key insights important to support heterogeneity, biodiversity, and resilience in fluvial ecosystems (Florsheim et al., 2024).

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Prescribed fire and mastication reduced bark-beetle-caused pine mortality

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Prescribed fire and mastication reduced bark-beetle-caused pine mortality

This study analyzes data from a mixed-severity fire in the northern range of coast redwood to create a model for predicting postfire response of four redwood community plants.Mastication, thinning, and prescribed fire can help shift fire-prone forests to a structure more resilient to fire and other disturbances. However, the ability to evaluate treatment effectiveness requires long-term monitoring of forest responses to disturbances and assessing changes in fuel loadings and structure. Researchers from Michigan State University and the USFS Fire Behavior Assessment Team remeasured a ponderosa pine forest 13 years after a combination of treatments were implemented: no treatment/control (C), mastication (M), mastication + burn (MB), and mastication + pull back of surface fuels + burn (MPB).

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Adaptive Strategies for Managing Bishop pine with Fire

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Adaptive Strategies for Managing Bishop pine with Fire

This study investigates Bishop pine's unique fire ecology, seed bank dynamics, and the impacts pine pitch canker infection has on stands.

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Heading fires consume more fuels than backing fires

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Heading fires consume more fuels than backing fires

Researchers from Michigan State University and the USFS Fire Behavior Assessment Team used 15 years of immediate pre- and post-fire fuel and wildfire behavior data to identify the role of fire advancement mode and pre-fire environmental drivers (e.g., topography, fire weather, and fuel loadings) on fuel consumption and fire effects in California mixed-conifer forests.

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Fire and fuels management in coast redwood forests

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Fire and fuels management in coast redwood forests

This report compiles research on fuel conditions, fire history, and fire effects data from contemporary wildfires to provide context for the future management of old growth coast redwood stands and restoration of old growth attributes in second growth forests. The report also investigates fire hazards present in redwood forests and their fire management implications.

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Post-fire Mastication Effects on Shrub Regrowth

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Post-fire Mastication Effects on Shrub Regrowth

In California’s dry mixed conifer forests, increasingly large high severity wildfires threaten to convert significant areas of forested land into shrub dominated landscapes in the absence of active reforestation, including control of competing vegetation. Previous studies have found that salvage logging and other methods used to prepare a site for reforestation may reduce shrub cover after wildfire. This study investigated the effect of masticated fuel depth on shrub growth where salvage logging and mastication followed high severity wildfire.

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Prescription Burning Reduces Alien Grasses in Native Grassland Restoration

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Prescription Burning Reduces Alien Grasses in Native Grassland Restoration

In Southern California, native bunchgrass communities dominated by Stipa pulchra are widely distributed in the state but often share dominance with non-native annual grasses. Restoration of these grasslands is focused on altering the balance of native to non-native grasses to favor the native perennial grasses. This study investigated the impact of burning on vegetation recovery.

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Status of Knowledge Synthesis for Desert Habitat Restoration and Post-Fire Rehabilitation

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Status of Knowledge Synthesis for Desert Habitat Restoration and Post-Fire Rehabilitation

Supported by the Clark County (Nevada) Desert Conservation Program and the California Fire Science Consortium, we completed a status of knowledge synthesis of restoration practices aimed at enhancing recovery of damaged habitats in the Mojave and western Sonoran Desert, some of the driest locations in North America.

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Long-Term Change in Desert Annuals during Restoration, Joshua Tree National Park

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Long-Term Change in Desert Annuals during Restoration, Joshua Tree National Park

It is not well understood whether desert plantings can facilitate recruitment of other natives (or mainly just non-natives), or whether facilitation changes through time as a restoration site matures. To address these uncertainties, we partnered with the National Park Service to study plant community change below planted perennials and in interspaces (areas between perennials) during 12 years (2009-2020) in Joshua Tree National Park, California, in the southern Mojave Desert.

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Tree recruitment over centuries: influences of climate and wildfire

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Tree recruitment over centuries: influences of climate and wildfire

This study uses tree cores gathered at three 4-hectare plots to make inferences about temporal aspects of tree recruitment in pine-dominated ecosystems of the California Sierra Nevada and the Sierra San Petro Martir in northwestern Mexico.

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Mega-disturbances & declining mature forest habitat

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Mega-disturbances & declining mature forest habitat

In this paper, the authors quantify change in the extent of mature conifer forests in the southern Sierra Nevada of California during 2011-2020, a decade and ecoregion characterized by compounding severe wildfires and drought follow prolonged fire exclusion.

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