Publications
The USGS fire science mission is to produce and deliver the best available scientific information, tools, and products to support land and emergency management by individuals and organizations at all levels. Below are USGS publications associated with our fire science portfolio.
Filter Total Items: 306
Wildfire-driven changes in hydrology mobilize arsenic and metals from legacy mine waste
Wildfires burning in watersheds that have been mined and since revegetated pose unique risks to downstream water supplies. A wildfire near Boulder, Colorado that burned a forested watershed recovering from mining disturbance that occurred 80-160 years ago allowed us to 1) assess arsenic and metal contamination in streams draining the burned area for a five-year period after the wildfire and 2) det
Authors
Sheila F. Murphy, R. Blaine McCleskey, Deborah A. Martin, JoAnn Holloway, Jeffrey H. Writer
Development of a new open-source tool to map burned area and burn severity
Accurate and complete geospatial fire occurrence records are important in determining postfire effects, emissions, hazards, and fuel loading inventories. Currently, the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS) project maps the fire perimeter and burn severity of all large fires on public lands. Although the MTBS project maps a large proportion of the fire acreage, it maps a smaller proportion of
Authors
Joshua J. Picotte
Wildfire-driven forest conversion in western North American landscapes
Changing disturbance regimes and climate can overcome forest ecosystem resilience. Following high-severity fire, forest recovery may be compromised by lack of tree seed sources, warmer and drier postfire climate, or short-interval reburning. A potential outcome of the loss of resilience is the conversion of the prefire forest to a different forest type or nonforest vegetation. Conversion implies m
Authors
Jonathan D. Coop, Sean A. Parks, Camile S Stevens-Rumann, Shelley D. Crausbay, Philip E. Higuera, Matthew D. Hurteau, Alan J. Tepley, Ellen Whitman, Timothy J Assal, Brandon M. Collins, Kimberley T Davis, Solomon Dobrowski, Donald A. Falk, Paula J. Fornwalt, Peter Z Fulé, Brian J. Harvey, Van R. Kane, Caitlin E. Littlefield, Ellis Margolis, Malcolm North, Marc-André Parisien, Susan Prichard, Kyle C. Rodman
Energy development and production in the Great Plains: Implications and restoration opportunities
Energy is an integral part of society. The major US energy sources of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas); biofuels (ethanol); and wind are concentrated in grassland ecosystems of the Great Plains. As energy demand continues to increase, mounting pressures will be placed on North American grassland systems. In this review, we present the ecological effects of energy development and production on
Authors
Jacqueline P. Ott, Brice B. Hanberry, Mona Khalil, Mark W. Paschke, Max Post van der Burg, Anthony J. Prenni
The Fire and Tree Mortality Database, for empirical modeling of individual tree mortality after fire
Wildland fires have a multitude of ecological effects in forests, woodlands, and savannas across the globe. A major focus of past research has been on tree mortality from fire, as trees provide a vast range of biological services. We assembled a database of individual-tree records from prescribed fires and wildfires in the United States. The Fire and Tree Mortality (FTM) database includes records
Authors
C. Alina Cansler, Sharon M. Hood, J. Morgan Varner, Phillip J. van Mantgem, Michelle C. Agne, Robert A. Andrus, Matthew P. Ayres, Bruce D. Ayres, Jonathan D. Bakker, Michael A. Battaglia, Barbara J. Bentz, Carolyn R. Breece, James K. Brown, Daniel R. Cluck, Tom W. Coleman, R. Gregory Corace, W. Wallace Covington, Douglas S. Cram, James B. Cronan, Joseph E. Crouse, Adrian Das, Ryan S. Davis, Darci M. Dickinson, Stephen A Fitzgerald, Peter Z. Fule, Lisa M. Ganio, Lindsay M. Grayson, Charles B. Halpern, Jim L. Hanula, Brian J. Harvey, J. Kevin Hiers, David W. Huffman, MaryBeth Keifer, Tara L. Keyser, Leda N. Kobziar, Thomas E. Kolb, Crystal A. Kolden, Karen E. Kopper, Jason R. Kreitler, Jesse K. Kreye, Andrew M. Latimer, Andrew P. Lerch, Maria J. Lombardero, Virginia L. McDaniel, Charles W. McHugh, Joel D. McMillin, Jason J. Moghaddas, Joseph J. O'Brien, Daniel D. B. Perrakis, David W. Peterson, Susan J. Pritchard, Robert A. Progar, Kenneth F. Raffa, Elizabeth D. Reinhardt, Joseph C. Restaino, John P. Roccaforte, Brendan M. Rogers, Kevin C. Ryan, Hugh D. Safford, Alyson E. Santoro, Timothy M. Shearman, Alice M. Shumate, Carolyn H. Sieg, Sheri L. Smith, Rebecca J. Smith, Nathan L. Stephenson, Mary Stuever, Jens Stevens, Michael T. Stoddard, Walter G. Thies, Nicole M. Vaillant, Shelby A. Weiss, Douglas J. Westlind, Travis J. Woolley, Micah C. Wright
Climate change projected to reduce prescribed burning opportunities in the south-eastern United States
Prescribed burning is a critical tool for managing wildfire risks and meeting ecological objectives, but its safe and effective application requires that specific meteorological criteria (a ‘burn window’) are met. Here, we evaluate the potential impacts of projected climatic change on prescribed burning in the south-eastern United States by applying a set of burn window criteria that capture tempe
Authors
John A Kupfer, Adam J. Terando, Peng Gao, Casey Teske, J Kevin Hiers
Disturbance refugia within mosaics of forest fire, drought, and insect outbreaks
Disturbance refugia – locations that experience less severe or frequent disturbances than the surrounding landscape – provide a framework to highlight not only where and why these biological legacies persist as adjacent areas change but also the value of those legacies in sustaining biodiversity. Recent studies of disturbance refugia in forest ecosystems have focused primarily on fire, with a grow
Authors
Meg A. Krawchuk, Garrett Meigs, Jennifer M. Cartwright, Jonathan D. Coop, Raymond J. Davis, Andres Holz, Crystal A. Kolden, Arjan J.H. Meddens
Landslides across the United States: Occurrence, susceptibility, and data limitations
Detailed information about landslide occurrence is the foundation for advancing process understanding, susceptibility mapping, and risk reduction. Despite the recent revolution in digital elevation data and remote sensing technologies, landslide mapping remains resource intensive. Consequently, a modern, comprehensive map of landslide occurrence across the United States (USA) has not been compiled
Authors
Benjamin B. Mirus, Eric S. Jones, Rex L. Baum, Jonathan W. Godt, Stephen L. Slaughter, Matthew Crawford, Jeremy T. Lancaster, Thomas Stanley, Dalia Kirschbaum, William J. Burns, Robert G. Schmitt, Kassandra O Lindsey, Kevin McCoy
Departures of rangeland fractional component cover and land cover from landsat-based ecological potential in Wyoming USA
Monitoring rangelands by identifying the departure of contemporary conditions from long-term ecological potential allows for the disentanglement of natural biophysical gradients driving change from changes associated with land uses and other disturbance types. We developed maps of ecological potential (EP) for shrub, sagebrush (Artemisia spp.), perennial herbaceous, litter, and bare ground fractio
Authors
Matthew B. Rigge, Collin G. Homer, Hua Shi, Bruce Wylie
Wildfire reveals transient changes to individual traits and population responses of a native bumble bee (Bombus vosnesenskii)
1. Fire-induced changes in the abundance and distribution of organisms, especially plants, can alter resource landscapes for mobile consumers driving bottom-up effects on their population sizes, morphologies, and reproductive potential. We expect these impacts to be most striking for obligate visitors of plants, like bees and other pollinators, but these impacts can be difficult to interpret due t
Authors
John Michael Mola, Michael R. Miller, Sean M. O'Rourke, Neal M. Williams
The Landsat Burned Area algorithm and products for the conterminous United States
Complete and accurate burned area map data are needed to document spatial and temporal patterns of fires, to quantify their drivers, and to assess the impacts on human and natural systems. In this study, we developed the Landsat Burned Area (BA) algorithm, an update from the Landsat Burned Area Essential Climate Variable (BAECV) algorithm. Here, we present the BA algorithm and products, changes re
Authors
Todd Hawbaker, Melanie K. Vanderhoof, Gail L. Schmidt, Yen-Ju G. Beal, Joshua J. Picotte, Joshua Takacs, Jeff T. Falgout, John L. Dwyer
Millennial-scale climate and human drivers of environmental change and fire activity in a dry, mixed-conifer forest of northwestern Montana
Warm summer temperatures and longer fire seasons are promoting larger, and in some cases, more fires that are severe in low- and mid-elevation, dry mixed-conifer forests of the Northern Rocky Mountains (NRM). Long-term historical fire conditions and human influence on past fire activity are not well understood for these topographically and biophysically heterogeneous forests. We developed reconstr
Authors
David B. McWethy, Mio Alt, Elana Argiriadis, Dario Battistel, Richard G. Everett, Gregory T. Pederson