Morris Johnson
Research Interests
- Forest Structure and Fire Hazard
- Simulation Modeling
Project Summaries
Fuels Planning: Science Synthesis and Integration
A century of fire suppression has created heavy fuel loads in many
U.S. forests, leading to increasingly intense wildfires. Addressing
this problem will require widespread fuels treatments, yet fuels
treatment planners do not always have access to the current scientific
information that can help guide their planning process. The Fuels
Planning: Science Synthesis and Integration project was launched
to compile relevant fuels treatment information for managers. Products
include syntheses on various topics, a guidebook on silvicultural
prescriptions, a set of models and information databases on possible
environmental effects of fuels treatments, and a financial analysis
tool for estimating costs and revenues of fuels treatments. The
Fuels Planning project provides an example of how collaboration
between managers and scientists can improve the utility of scientific
findings. It is currently forming partnerships with several National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) interdisciplinary teams who will
use these decision support tools in planning fuels reduction projects
starting in the summer of 2005.
Guide to Fuel Treatments in Dry Forests of the Western United
States: Assessing Forest Structure and Fire Hazard
Guide to Fuel Treatments analyzes a range of fuel treatments for
representative dry forest stands in the Western United States with
overstories dominated by ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa), Douglas-fir
(Pseudotsuga menziesii), and pinyon pine (Pinus edulis). Six silvicultural
options (no thinning; thinning from below to 50 trees per acre [tpa],
100 tpa, 200 tpa, and 300 tpa; and prescribed fire) are considered
in combination with three surface fuel treatments (no treatment,
pile and burn, and prescribed fire), resulting in a range of alternative
treatments for each representative stand. The Fire and Fuels Extension
of the Forest Vegetation Simulator (FFE-FVS) was used to calculate
the immediate effects of treatments on surface fuels, fire hazard,
potential fire behavior, and forest structure. The FFE-FVS was also
used to calculate a 50-year time series of treatment effects at
10-year increments. Usually, thinning to 50 to 100 tpa and an associated
surface fuel treatment were shown to be necessary to alter potential
fire behavior from crown fire to surface fire under severe fire
weather conditions. This level of fuel treatment generally was predicted
to maintain potential fire behavior as surface fire for 30 to 40
years, depending on how fast regeneration occurs in the understory,
after which additional fuel treatment would be necessary to maintain
surface fire behavior. Fuel treatment scenarios presented here can
be used by resource managers to examine alternatives for National
Environmental Policy Act documents and other applications that require
scientifically based information to quantify the effects of modifying
forest structure and surface fuels.
Cedar River Municipal Watershed Fire Hazard Assessment
Fire hazard in the Cedar River Municipal Watershed (CRMW) was assessed
in order to provide information needed to reconcile ecological restoration
and fire management with respect to fuel loadings across the landscape.
Specifically the assessment (1) characterizes vegetation patterns
and distribution, (2) describes and quantifies current and potential
wildfire hazard, (3) develops and simulates potential thinnings
and surface fuel treatments to identify options for addressing and
minimizing fire hazard, and (4) develops maps of current and predicted
fire hazard. The Fire and Fuels Extension to the Forest Vegetation
Simulator (FFE-FVS) was used to quantify fuels for different forest
classifications and to predict the characteristics and effects of
a fire should one occur during warm, dry weather conditions.
Cedar River Municipal Watershed Decomposition Study
This study provides fine-scale temporal data on fuel succession
to inform the coarse-scale assessment of fire hazard for different
management options. The objectives of this study are: (1) quantify
fuelbed characteristics (e.g., fuelbed loadings and fuelbed depth)
in stands that were thinned at different times, (2) examine the
effect of surface fuel treatments on fuelbeds, and (3) estimate
fuel loading residence time.
Curriculum Vitae [.html][.pdf]
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