Fire Ecology
By Josh McDaniel
Land managers will soon be faced with the apparent paradox of simultaneously managing forests for both fire management and carbon sequestration. Research presented at the conference showed that researchers will be working alongside land managers to solve that puzzle.
By Stephen Pyne
It is here that storm surges of fire, roaring over the long fetch of the Great Plains, whipped by the westerlies into whitecaps of flame, crash against the less combustible woods.
By Stephen Pyne
Restoration is a slippery concept. In some places it means mostly finding ways to preserve and enhance relicts that have survived the battering. In other places it means an outright regeneration, or a reconversion of farmland to prairie. But at its core it involves sparing the pieces and saving the processes that connect them.
By Stephen Pyne
America's fire polity has split into two dominant confederations. One looks to wilderness as a guide, and tolerates human activities insofar as they lead ultimately to their own removal. The other looks to working landscapes for which fire remains an implement for hunting, herding, logging, and other forms of sustenance that serve human economies. There is little common ground between them...
By Josh McDaniel
Large fluxes of carbon into the atmosphere from wildfires can have an impact on the global carbon cycle, and with policy initiatives forming around carbon management and carbon budgets, researchers are scrambling to fill in the gaps regarding the role of fire in carbon emissions and sequestration.
Fact Sheet-Role of Forest Carbon in Climate Change Policy
By Josh McDaniel
Forests absorb billions of tons of CO2 globally per year, amounting to about 30% of all CO2 emissions from fossil fuel burning. This freebie economic subsidy may be coming to an end.
Fact Sheet-Role of Forest Carbon in Climate Change Policy
By Josh McDaniel
The latest in an ongoing scientific debate as to whether the massive Southern California fires are natural and infrequent events in the chaparral ecosystem or are the result of a fire suppression policy that has allowed an unnatural accumulation of fuels.
By Josh McDaniel
Lodgepole pines throughout the Rockies are dying. The culprit is a tiny beetle, no bigger than some of the letters on this page.
Fact Sheet-Beetle Kill and Fire Risk
By Josh McDaniel
Not everyone is ready to surrender to cheatgrass. Zion National Park is tackling the cheatgrass problem head-on.
Audio Slideshow-Cheatgrass and Zion NP
By Josh McDaniel
The October fires in southern California brought national media attention to many of the issues that are front and center in wildland fire research.
By Josh McDaniel
During the southern California fires, TV viewers saw aerial views of flames coming out of the canyons and battering against tightly-packed hilltop subdivisions. Even reporters and viewers who had never heard of the term wildland-urban interface started asking the fundamental question - why are we still building homes in these areas?
By Anne Black
The Fire lookouts began calling in at 4:30 P.M. on Saturday July 20 2004. There were several fires on Green Ridge and in Scimitar Creek on the West Fork Ranger District of the Bitterroot National Forest (BRF).