Fire and Environmental Research Applications Team

POSTERS AND PAPERS AT THE PACIFIC COAST FIRE CONFERENCE

FERA will be presenting 5 talks and 3 posters at the Pacific Coast Fire Conference in San Diego, California December 2-4.

--Managing New Fire Regimes: The Challenge of Climate Change (Peterson)
--"Fuel Treatment Effectiveness in the 2006 Tripod Complex Fires, Washington, USA (Prichard)
--Tree Mortality and Bark Beetle Infestations Following Fuels Treatments in a Western US Pine Plantation (Lyons-Tinsley)
--Assessing Post-Fire Logging Effectiveness in Reducing Fire Hazard (Ottmar)
--Early Riparian Plant Colonization Patterns in Two Oregon Fires (Halofsky)
--Methods for Quantifying Fuel Consumption and Fire Intensity during a Chaparral Wildfire (Wright)
--Fuel Structure of Three Southern California Chaparral Species (Wright)
-- Multi-Criteria Optimization Balances Ecological and Fuel Treatment
--Priorities across Landscapes (Kennedy)

In addition to presentations, a half-day workshop on the Fuel Characteristic Classification System, Consume 3.0, and the Natural Fuels Photo Series will be offered on Monday afternoon, December 2. Registration is still open for the workshop. A booth in the exhibit area will be staffed by FERA members and feature all of the team’s publications, software, and other tools.

HURRICANE FUELS NATURAL PHOTO SERIES FIELD WORK COMPLETE

FERA’s field crew wrapped up their 2008 field season in east Texas on the Davy Crockett National Forest collecting data from forest stands affected by Hurricane Ike. Work on data analysis and preparation for publication of a series of 20 sites inventoried will take place over the next year or so. This work is funded by the Joint Fire Science Program.

CORE FIRE SCIENCE CAUCUS REVIEWS PRELIMINARY DATA FROM RXCADRE BURNS

Preliminary results from a series of March 2008 burns held in south Georgia and Florida were presented to the Core Fire Science Caucus November 5-6 in Niceville, Florida. This series of research burns (Prescribed Fire Combustion-Atmospheric Dynamics Research Experiments) tested methods and procedures for researchers to collaborate on individual fires with the goal of measuring, as completely as possible, potential relationships between physical processes -- fuel, air, and fire -- in a field setting. Possible near-term products include a special session at the 2009 Fire and Forest Meteorology Conference and a Forest Service general technical report.

Watch a video by Georgia Public Broadcasting that includes footage from the RxCadre Fires

GLOBAL WARMING AND STRESS COMPLEXES IN FORESTS OF WESTERN NORTH AMERICA

This book chapter proposes that stress complexes (combinations of biotic and abiotic stresses) compromise the vigor and ultimate sustainability of forest ecosystems. Written by Don McKenzie, David L. Peterson, and Jeremy Littell, it has been published by Elsevier as part of the book "Wildland Fires and Air Pollution," part of the series "Developments in Environmental Science." It is now available in Europe, and will be published in the United States early in 2009.