Publications
The USGS fire science mission is to produce and deliver the best available scientific information, tools, and products to support land and emergency management by individuals and organizations at all levels. Below are USGS publications associated with our fire science portfolio.
Filter Total Items: 301
Operationalizing resilience and resistance concepts to address invasive grass-fire cycles
Plant invasions can affect fuel characteristics, fire behavior, and fire regimes resulting in invasive plant-fire cycles and alternative, self-perpetuating states that can be difficult, if not impossible, to reverse. Concepts related to general resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasive plants provide the basis for managing landscapes to increase their capacity to reorganize and adjust f
Authors
Jeanne C. Chambers, Matthew L. Brooks, Matthew J. Germino, Jeremy D Maestas, David I Board, Matthew O. Jones, Brady W Allred
Bunchgrass root abundances and their relationship to resistance and resilience of a burned shrub-steppe landscape
Invasion of exotic annual grasses (EAG) and increased wildfire have motivated an emphasis on managing rangeland plant communities for resistance to invasion and resilience to disturbances. These traits are provided primarily by perennial bunchgrasses in rangelands such as shrub steppe, and specifically but also hypothetically, the abundances and functioning of bunchgrass roots. We asked how bunc
Authors
Matthew J. Germino, Matthew Fisk, Cara Applestein
Turbidity current observations in a large reservoir following a major wildfire
Turbidity currents are generated when denser river water plunges and flows along the bottom of a lake, reservoir, or ocean. The plunging and downstream movement are driven by density differences due to temperature and/or suspended sediment, and currents have been observed to move slowly over long distances. This study presents observations of multiple turbidity currents in a large reservoir in Cal
Authors
Scott A. Wright, Mathieu D. Marineau
Evaluating the mid-infrared bi-spectral index for improved assessment of low-severity fire effects in a conifer forest
Remote sensing products provide a vital understanding of wildfire effects across a landscape, but detection and delineation of low- and mixed-severity fire remains difficult. While data provided by the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity project (MTBS) are frequently used to assess severity in the United States, alternative indices can offer improvement to the measurement of low-severity fire effec
Authors
R McCarley, A.M.S Smith, C.A. Kolden, Jason R. Kreitler
Postfire population dynamics of a fire-dependent cypress
Tecate cypress (Hesperocyparis forbesii) is a rare species restricted to four metapopulations in southern California, USA and a few isolated stands in northern Baja California, Mexico. It is a closed-cone, fire-dependent tree of conservation concern due to an increase in human-caused wildfires that have shortened the interval between fires in many of their populations. In 2003 the Mine/Otay Fire b
Authors
Teresa J. Brennan, Jon Keeley
Developing an expert elicited simulation model to evaluate invasive species and fire management alternatives
Invasive species can alter ecosystem properties and cause state shifts in landscapes. Resource managers charged with maintaining landscapes require tools to understand implications of alternative actions (or inactions) on landscape structure and function. Simulation models can serve as a virtual laboratory to explore these alternatives and their potential impacts on a landscape. To be useful, howe
Authors
Catherine S. Jarnevich, Catherine Cullinane Thomas, Nicholas E. Young, Dana M. Backer, Sarah A. Cline, Leonardo Frid, Perry Grissom
Wildfires as an ecosystem service
Wildfires are often viewed as destructive disturbances. We propose that when including both evolutionary and socioecological scales, most ecosystem fires can be understood as natural processes that provide a variety of benefits to humankind. Wildfires provide open habitats that enable the evolution of a diversity of shade-intolerant plants and animals that have long been used by humans. There are
Authors
Juli G. Pausas, Jon Keeley
The ecological uncertainty of wildfire fuel breaks: Examples from the sagebrush steppe
Fuel breaks are increasingly being implemented at broad scales (100s to 10,000s of square kilometers) in fire‐prone landscapes globally, yet there is little scientific information available regarding their ecological effects (eg habitat fragmentation). Fuel breaks are designed to reduce flammable vegetation (ie fuels), increase the safety and effectiveness of fire‐suppression operations, and ultim
Authors
Douglas J. Shinneman, Matthew J. Germino, David S. Pilliod, Cameron L. Aldridge, Nicole Vaillant, Peter S. Coates
Soil physical, hydraulic, and thermal properties in interior Alaska, USA: Implications for hydrologic response to thawing permafrost conditions
Boreal forest regions are a focal point for investigations of coupled water and biogeochemical fluxes in response to wildfire disturbances, climate warming, and permafrost thaw. Soil hydraulic, physical, and thermal property measurements for mineral soils in permafrost regions are limited, despite substantial influences on cryohydrogeologic model results. This work expands mineral soil property qu
Authors
Brian A. Ebel, Joshua C. Koch, Michelle A. Walvoord
Fire risk in revegetated bunchgrass communities Infested with Bromus tectorum
In rangeland ecosystems, invasive annual grass replacement of native perennials is associated with higher fire risk. Large bunchgrasses are often seeded to reduce cover of annuals such as Bromus tectorum L. (cheatgrass), but there is limited information about how revegetation reduces fire risk over the long-term. For this research note, we conducted a pilot study to assess how community composit
Authors
Steve O Link, Randall W Hill, Sheel Bansal
A synthesis of ecosystem management strategies for forests in the face of chronic N deposition
The relative importance of nitrogen (N) deposition as a stressor to global forests is likely to increase in the future, as N deposition increases in Asia and Africa, and as sulfur declines more than nitrogen in Europe, the US, and Canada. Even so, it appears that decreased N deposition may not be sufficient to induce recovery, suggesting that management interventions may be necessary to promote re
Authors
Christopher M. Clark, J. Richkus, Philip W Jones, Jennifer Phelan, Douglas A. Burns, Wim deVries, Enzai Du, Mark E. Fenn, Laurence Jones, Shaun A. Watmough
Calibration of Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) to simulate prefire and postfire hydrologic response in the upper Rio Hondo Basin, New Mexico
The Precipitation-Runoff Modeling System (PRMS) is widely used to simulate the effects of climate, topography, land cover, and soils on landscape-level hydrologic responses and streamflow. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), in cooperation with the New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, developed procedures to apply the PRMS model to simulate the effects of fire on hyd
Authors
Kyle R. Douglas-Mankin, C. David Moeser