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: 307
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
Tree-ring evidence of forest management moderating drought responses: Implications for dry, coniferous forests in the southwestern United States
Drought, coupled with rising temperatures, is an emerging threat to many forest types across the globe. At least to a degree, we expect management actions that reduce competition (e.g., thinning, prescribed fire, or both) to improve growth of residual trees during drought. The influences of management actions and drought on individual tree growth may be measured with high precision using tree-ring
Authors
Phillip J. van Mantgem, Lucy P Kerhoulas, Rosemary L. Sherriff, Zachary James Wenderott
Runoff-initiated post-fire debris flow Western Cascades, Oregon
Wildfires dramatically alter the hydraulics and root reinforcement of soil on forested hillslopes, which can promote the generation of debris flows. In the Pacific Northwest, post-fire shallow landsliding has been well documented and studied, but the potential role of runoff-initiated debris flows is not well understood and only one previous to 2018 had been documented in the region. On 20 June 20
Authors
Sara Wall, J.J. Roering, Francis K. Rengers
Cooperatively improving tallgrass prairie with adaptive management
Adaptive management (AM) is widely recommended as an approach for learning to improve resource management, but successful AM projects remain relatively uncommon, with few documented examples applied by natural resource management agencies. We used AM to make recommendations for the management of native tallgrass prairie plant communities in western Minnesota and eastern North and South Dakota, USA
Authors
Marissa Ahlering, Daren Carlson, Sara Vacek, Sarah Jacobi, Vicky Hunt, Jessica C. Stanton, Melinda G. Knutson, Eric V. Lonsdorf
Dynamics, variability, and change in seasonal precipitation reconstructions for North America
Cool and warm season precipitation totals have been reconstructed on a gridded basis for North America using 439 tree-ring chronologies correlated with December-April totals and 547 different chronologies correlated with May-July totals. These discrete seasonal predictor chronologies are not significantly correlated with the alternate season and the reconstructions calibrate at least 40% of the v
Authors
David W. Stahle, Edward R Cook, Dorian J Burnette, Max C.A. Torbenson, Ian M Howard, Daniel Griffin, Jose Villanueva Diaz, Benjamin I. Cook, Park A. Williams, Emma Watson, David J. Sauchyn, Neil Pederson, Connie A. Woodhouse, Gregory T. Pederson, David M. Meko, Bethany Coulthard, Christopher J. Crawford
North Carolina State climate report
Our scientific understanding of the climate system strongly supports the conclusion that North Carolina’s climate has changed in recent decades and the expectation that large changes—much larger than at any time in the state’s history—will occur if current trends in greenhouse gas concentrations continue. Even under a scenario where emissions peak around 2050 and decline thereafter, North Carolina
Authors
Kenneth E. Kunkel, David R Easterling, Andrew Ballinger, Solomon Bililign, Sarah M Champion, D Reide Corbett, Kathie Dello, Jenny Dissen, James P. Kossin, Gary Lackmann, Rick Luettich, Baker Perry, Walter Robinson, Laura E. Stevens, Brooke C. Stewart, Adam Terando
Temporal evolution of measured and simulated infiltration following wildfire in the Colorado Front Range, USA: Shifting thresholds of runoff generation and hydrologic hazards
Destructive flash floods and debris flows are a common menace following wildfire. The restoration of protection provided by forests from post-fire floods and debris flows depends on the recovery of infiltration and attendant reduction of infiltration-excess surface runoff generation. This work examines seven years of post-fire infiltration measurements and temporal relations fit to soil-hydraulic
Authors
Brian A. Ebel
Biogeography of fire regimes in western US conifer forests: A trait-based approach
Aim
Functional traits are a critical link between species distributions and the ecosystem processes that structure those species’ niches. Concurrent increases in the availability of functional trait data and our ability to model species distributions present an opportunity to develop functional trait biogeography, i.e. the mapping of functional traits across space. Functional trait biogeography ca
Authors
Jens Stevens, Matthew M. Kling, Dylan W. Schwilk, J. Morgan Varner, Jeffrey M. Kane
Mapping fire regime ecoregions in California
The fire regime is a central framing concept in wildfire science and ecology and describes how a range of wildfire characteristics vary geographically over time. Understanding and mapping fire regimes is important for guiding appropriate management and risk reduction strategies and for informing research on drivers of global change and altered fire patterns. Most efforts to spatially delineate fir
Authors
Alexandra D. Syphard, Jon Keeley
Estimating abiotic thresholds for sagebrush condition class in the western United States
Sagebrush ecosystems of the western United States can transition from extended periods of relatively stable conditions to rapid ecological change if acute disturbances occur. Areas dominated by native sagebrush can transition from species-rich native systems to altered states where non-native annual grasses dominate, if resistance to annual grasses is low. The non-native annual grasses provide rel
Authors
Stephen P. Boyte, Bruce K. Wylie, Yingxin Gu, Donald J. Major
Characterizing land surface phenology and exotic annual grasses in dryland ecosystems using Landsat and Sentinel-2 data in harmony
Invasive annual grasses, such as cheatgrass (Bromus tectorum L.), have proliferated in dryland ecosystems of the western United States, promoting increased fire activity and reduced biodiversity that can be detrimental to socio-environmental systems. Monitoring exotic annual grass cover and dynamics over large areas requires the use of remote sensing that can support early detection and rapid resp
Authors
Neal Pastick, Devendra Dahal, Bruce K. Wylie, Sujan Parajuli, Stephen P. Boyte, Zhuoting Wu
Forest vegetation change and its impacts on soil water following 47 years of managed wildfire
Managed wildfire is an increasingly relevant management option to restore variability in vegetation structure within fire-suppressed montane forests in western North America. Managed wildfire often reduces tree cover and density, potentially leading to increases in soil moisture availability, water storage in soils and groundwater, and streamflow. However, the potential hydrologic impacts of manag
Authors
Jens Stevens, Gabrielle F. S. Boisramé, Ekaterina Rakhmatulina, Sally E. Thompson, Brandon M. Collins, Scott L. Stephens