Management Tools
Management Tools
USGS scientist investigate and develop a variety of tools that can be used for wildland fire management, ranging from on-the-ground land treatments designed to help reduce the spread of wildfires, to predictive tools to help managers better understand the dynamics of fires and the locations where they are most likely to occur.
Filter Total Items: 59
Role of Fire and Fuels in Ecological Restoration
Fuel loads are important drivers of fire behavior, and fire is an important natural process that can also be used as a tool for ecological restoration purposes. Land managers and fire experts attempt to track and manipulate fuel loads in order to assess fire risk, control fire behavior, and restore ecosystems. Thus, understanding the relationships between fire, vegetation dynamics, and fuel loads...
Fire Effects and Forest Recovery
This research theme examines the impacts of prescribed fire on plant productivity, soil physical, chemical, and biological characteristics, and nutrient leaching. Results from this research will enable improved decision-making of how to manage fire-prone forests to maintain long-term forest fertility and productivity, especially across wide climate gradients characteristic of the Pacific Northwest...
Wildland Fire Science in Forests and Deserts
Fuel conditions and fire regimes in western forests and deserts have been altered due to past land management, biological invasions, and recent extreme weather events and climate shifts. These changes have created extreme fire risk to local and regional communities, threatening their economic health related to wildland recreation, forest production, livestock operations, and other uses of public...
Assessing Seasonal Wildfire Forecasting Methods in Alaska
In Alaska, increased wildfire activity has been linked to warming temperatures. Summers with extreme wildfire activity threaten life and property, clog the air with smoke, and challenge the state’s wildland firefighters. While the largest fires are often started by lightning and burn in remote areas, these fires require significant resources to fight when they threaten life and property.
USGS Data Collection: Real-Time Rain Gages for Post Conchas-Fire Flood-Early Warning System
The Las Conchas fire started on June 26, 2011, near the small community of Las Conchas in the Jemez Mountains of north-central New Mexico. When the fire was contained on August 3, 2011, it had burned 156,593 acres of mixed conifer, pinyon/juniper, and ponderosa forest. At the time, it was the largest wildfire in New Mexico history. Peak burn severity was extreme; over 60,000 acres of the total...
Field of Sagebrush Dreams: Planting and Restoring Functional Sagebrush in Burned Landscapes
Increased wildfire-induced loss of sagebrush in North American shrublands are outpacing natural recovery and leading to substantial habitat loss for sagebrush-obligate species like sage-grouse. The products and information developed for this project will help restoration practitioners, biologists, and land managers evaluate the efficacy of sagebrush restoration approaches as well as their ability...
Can Prescribed Fire Help Forests Survive Drought in the Sierra Nevada Mountains?
In 2017, California was experiencing its most severe drought in over a millennia. Low rainfall and record high temperatures resulted in increased tree mortality and complete forest diebacks across the West. Though land managers scrambled to respond, they lacked information needed to make informed decisions. Focusing on California’s central and southern Sierra Nevada Mountains, this...
Prewildfire Assessments of Postwildfire Debris-Flow Hazards
Debris flows are high-density slurries of water, rock fragments, soil, and mud that can have enormous destructive power. Wildfire can drastically increase the probability of debris flows in landscapes that have otherwise been stable. In 2010, the USGS developed the Cannon model to estimate postwildfire debris-flow probabilities and volumes in burned areas. In 2013, with the help of U.S. Forest...
Postwildfire Debris-Flow Hazards
Wildfire is a natural process in forest ecosystems, and occurs with varying frequencies and severities depending on landscape characteristics, climatic conditions, and the historical fire regime. Although attention often is focused on the potential damages from wildfire in the wildland-urban interface, wildfire also presents a threat to critical infrastructure including flood water conveyances and...
Examining Soil and Drought Dynamics to Improve Fire Forecasting in the Southern Great Plains
The need to improve fire weather predictions for the southern Great Plains has grown in recent years, following a number of extreme fire events. While on-the-ground conditions that promote fire development in the region are still not well understood, research suggests that fire-friendly conditions are determined by more than just precipitation amounts or wind speeds. They are also...
Bandelier National Monument Postwildfire Flood Support
In the summer of 2011, the Las Conchas Fire burned 156,593 acres in the Jemez Mountains in northern NM including the upper watersheds of Frijoles and Capulin Canyons in Bandelier National Monument. The drastic removal of vegetation in the upper watersheds of these popular tourist destinations left them susceptible to dangerous and record breaking floods. As long as the threat of large post...