U.S. Joint Fire Science Program

 

Date of this Version

2011

Document Type

Article

Citation

Final Report JFSP Project 6-3-3-04

Comments

US government work.

Abstract

With increasing interest in fuels treatments to address the high risk of severe fires in the western United States, there is an attendant need to quantify the effectiveness of such treatments. In addition to the immediate effect of reducing levels of combustible material and the attendant impact on fire intensity, resource managers also need to quantify or forecast the longevity of such treatments. Treatments that produce significant, but short-lived reductions in risk of severe wildfire may not be meeting the goals and objectives of managers. This temporal component needs further study and is the subject of this proposal. There are three components to the project: (1) Quantify the change in fuels in the first five years following combinations of thinning and prescribed fire treatments in ponderosa pine stands. This will be done using data obtained from the Blacks Mountain Ecological Research Project (Oliver 2000). The second portion of the study will involve a destructive sample from three sites on the Experimental Forest. We will estimate the crown weight (foliage biomass) for trees in stands at Blacks Mountain thinned in 1996, 1998, 2004, and an untreated stand. Using the derived biomass relationships, we will quantified the temporal change in stand-level foliage biomass.

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