Fire History
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 Mark Matthews
SPRING 2009
Topics: Hazard & Risk, Fire History
On August 5, 1949, a surging wildfire trapped fifteen smoke jumpers and one fireguard in a chimney-shaped canyon called Mann Gulch, whose mouth opened onto the banks of the Missouri River outside Great Falls, Mont. The fire instantaneously killed eleven men; another two died in the hospital the next day.
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
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?