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opencc-zeroJan 2023View details →

Black spruce seed availability and viability after fire, Northwest Territories, Canada

Context : Black spruce ( Picea mariana ) is an important conifer in boreal North American that develops a semi-serotinous, aerial seedbank and releases a pulse of seeds after fire. Variation in post-fire seed rain has important consequences for black spruce regeneration and stand composition. Aims : We explore the possible effects of changes in fire regime on the abundance and viability of black spruce seeds following a very large wildfire season in the Northwest Territories, Canada (NWT). Methods: We measured post-fire seed rain over two years at 25 black sprucedominated sites and evaluated drivers of stand characteristics and environmental conditions on total black spruce seed rain and viability. Results : We found a positive relationship between black spruce basal area and total seed rain. However, at high basal areas this increasing rate of seed rain was not maintained. Viable seed rain was greater in stands that were older, closer to unburned edges, and where canopy combustion was less severe. Finally, we demonstrated positive relationships between seed rain and seedling establishment, confirming our measures of seed rain were key drivers of post-fire forest regeneration. Conclusion: These results suggest that black spruce recruitment after fire may be reduced with projected increases in fire activity.

opencc-by-4.0Mar 2017View details →

Making tea using dry leaves, with enclosure to prevent fire from spreading (Difoinarti, N19.94736° E30.49462°)

Use of fire: c) making tea (using dry leaves, including date palms leaves, central part of sociability among farmers during day; here with metal enclosure to prevent fire from spreading) or heating food

opencc-zeroFeb 2023View details →

Data for: Prescribed fire increases plant-pollinator network robustness to losses of rare native forbs

Restoration efforts often focus on changing the composition and structure of invaded plant communities, with two implicit assumptions: 1) functional interactions with species of other trophic levels, such as pollinators, will reassemble automatically when native plant diversity is restored; and 2) restored communities will be more resilient to future stressors. However, the impact of restoration activities on pollinator richness, plant-pollinator interaction network structure, and network robustness is incompletely understood. Leveraging a restoration chronosequence in Pacific Northwest prairies, we examined the effects of restoration-focused prescribed fire and native forb replanting on floral resources, pollinator visitation, and plant-pollinator network structure. We then simulated the effects of plant species loss/removal scenarios on secondary extinction cascades in the networks. Specifically, we explored three management-relevant plant loss scenarios (removal of an abundant exotic forb, removal of an abundant forb designated a noxious weed, and loss of the rarest native forb) and compared them to control scenarios. Pyrodiversity, proportion of area recently burned, and cumulative replanting effort (plugging and seeding) over the prior 10 years increased the abundance and diversity of floral resources, with concomitant increases in pollinator visitation and diversity. Pyrodiversity also decreased network connectance and nestedness, increased modularity, and buffered networks against secondary extinction cascades. Rare forbs contributed disproportionately to network robustness in less restored prairies, while removal of typical "problem" plants like exotic and noxious species had relatively small impacts on network robustness, particularly in prairies with a long history of restoration activities. Restoration actions aimed mainly at improving the diversity and abundance of pollinator-provisioning plants may also produce plant-pollinator networks with increased resilience to plant species losses.

opencc-by-4.0Feb 2023View details →

distribution data of Argentine ant and little fire ant

Distribution data of Argentine ant and little fire ant. It's CSV format. It was collected from CABI, GBIF and PIKA.

opencc-zeroMar 2023View details →

Data from: Reduced fire severity offers near-term buffer to climate-driven declines in conifer resilience across the western United States

The combination of increasing fire-caused tree mortality and warmer, drier post-fire conditions is making forests in the western United States (West) vulnerable to ecological transformation. Yet, the relative importance of and interactions between these drivers of forest change remain unresolved, particularly over upcoming decades. Here we assess how the interactive impacts of changing climate and wildfire activity influenced conifer regeneration after 334 wildfires, using a novel dataset of post-fire conifer regeneration from 10,230 field plots. Our findings highlight declining regeneration capacity across the West over the past four decades for the eight dominant conifer species studied. Post-fire regeneration is sensitive to high-severity fire, which limits seed availability, and post-fire climate, which influences seedling establishment and survival. In the near-term, projected differences in recruitment probability between low- and high-severity fire scenarios were larger than projected impacts of climate change for most species, suggesting that reductions in fire severity, and resultant impacts on seed availability, could partially offset expected climate-driven declines in post-fire regeneration. Across 40–42% of the study area, we project post-fire conifer regeneration to be likely following low-severity but not high-severity fire under future climate scenarios (2031–2050). However, increasingly warm, dry climate conditions are projected to eventually outweigh the influence of fire severity and seed availability. The percent of the study area considered unlikely to experience conifer regeneration, regardless of fire severity, increased from 5% in 1981–2000 to 26–31% by mid-century, highlighting a limited time window over which management actions that reduce fire severity may effectively support post-fire conifer regeneration.

opencc-by-4.0Mar 2023View details →

Integration of a deep-learning-based fire model into a global land surface model

JSBACH4+DL-fire simulation results & their comparison (DL-fire, JSB4-DL-fire, JSB4-simple)

opencc-zeroMar 2023View details →

Incorporating pyrodiversity into wildlife habitat assessments for rapid post-fire management: A woodpecker case study

Spatial and temporal variation in fire characteristics – termed pyrodiversity – are increasingly recognized as important factors that structure wildlife communities in fire-prone ecosystems, yet there have been few attempts to incorporate pyrodiversity or post-fire habitat dynamics into predictive models of animal distributions and abundance to support post-fire management. We use the black-backed woodpecker – a species associated with burned forests – as a case study to demonstrate a pathway for incorporating pyrodiversity into wildlife habitat assessments for adaptive management. Employing monitoring data (2009–2019) from post-fire forests in California, we developed three competing occupancy models describing different hypotheses for habitat associations: (1) a static model representing an existing management tool, (2) a temporal model accounting for years since fire, and (3) a temporal-landscape model which additionally incorporates emerging evidence from field studies about the influence of pyrodiversity. Evaluating predictive ability, we found superior support for the temporal-landscape model, which showed a positive relationship between occupancy and pyrodiversity and interactions between habitat associations and years since fire. We incorporated this new temporal-landscape model into an RShiny application to make this decision-support tool accessible to decision-makers: <a href="https://birdpop.org/pages/bbwoPredPostFireDist.php">https://birdpop.org/pages/bbwoPredPostFireDist.php</a>.

opencc-zeroMar 2023View details →

Data From: Spot-fire distance increases disproportionately for wildfires compared to prescribed fires as grasslands transition to Juniperus woodlands

Woody encroachment is one of the greatest threats to grasslands globally, depleting a suite of ecosystem services, including forage production and grassland biodiversity. Recent evidence also suggests that woody encroachment increases wildfire danger, particularly in the Great Plains of North America, where highly volatile Juniperus spp. convert grasslands to an alternative woodland state. Spot-fire distances are a critical component of wildfire danger, describing the distance over which embers from one fire can cause a new fire ignition, potentially far away from fire suppression personnel. We assess changes in spot-fire distances as grasslands experience Juniperus encroachment to an alternative woodland state and how spot-fire distances differ under typical prescribed fire conditions compared to conditions observed during wildfire. We use BehavePlus to calculate spot-fire distances for these scenarios within the Loess Canyons Experimental Landscape, Nebraska, U.S.A., a 73,000-ha ecoregion where private-lands fire management is used to reduce woody encroachment and prevent further expansion of Juniperus fuels. We found prescribed fire used to control woody encroachment had lower maximum spot-fire distances compared to wildfires and, correspondingly, a lower amount of land area at risk to spot-fire occurrence. Under more extreme wildfire scenarios, spot-fire distances were 2 times higher in grasslands, and over 3 times higher in encroached grasslands and Juniperus woodlands compared to fires burned under prescribed fire conditions. Maximum spot-fire distance was 450% greater in Juniperus woodlands compared to grasslands and exposed an additional 14,000 ha of receptive fuels, on average, to spot-fire occurrence within the Loess Canyons Experimental Landscape. This study demonstrates that woody encroachment drastically increases risks associated with wildfire, and that spot fire distances associated with woody encroachment are much lower in prescribed fires used to control woody encroachment compared to wildfires.

opencc-zeroApr 2023View details →

Data from: Historical fire regimes and contemporary fire effects within sagebrush habitats of Gunnison Sage-grouse

The historical role of fire in sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) landscapes remains poorly understood yet is important to inform management and conservation of obligate species such as the threatened Gunnison Sage-grouse (GUSG; Centrocercus minimus). We reconstructed fire histories from tree-ring fire-scars at sagebrush-forest ecotones (10 sites, 111 trees) to better understand the role of fire in sagebrush landscapes of the Upper Gunnison Basin (UGB), Colorado, and how fire may have changed following European-American settlement. We assessed likely influences of historical fire by surveying plant composition and structure at 100 sagebrush sites with and without recent (2001–2020) fire. Tree-ring fire-scars revealed a history of repeated low-severity fire at sagebrush-forest ecotones until 1892, followed by over a century without fire. Between 1684 and 1892, the mean fire interval (MFI) among sites averaged 41.3 years (ranging from 18.2 to 79.7 years). Fire over this period occurred synchronously at two or more sites on average every 23.6 years, consistent with spread between sites. Most (70%) of the historical fires burned in the early growing season when strong winds can spread fire through sagebrush. Recent burns, relative to unburned sites exhibited greater reductions in sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata; 27% vs. 6%) and concomitant increases in herbaceous (40% vs. 55%) cover. These differences declined with time since fire but persisted for at least two decades. Burns were dominated by a suite of native perennial grasses, forbs, and a re-sprouting shrub species. Historically, such openings may have served as seasonal GUSG habitat. Burns exhibited slightly increased cover (4% vs. 1%) of a widely-planted non-native perennial grass, crested wheatgrass (Agropyron cristatum). Our results suggest that parts of the UGB sagebrush landscapes were characterized historically by frequent fire and dynamic vegetation mosaics that included open, grassy patches. These findings are consistent with the use of prescribed fire to restore and maintain this ecological process and vegetation heterogeneity. However, the contemporary context for fire has changed, and now includes substantially reduced (Endangered Species Act) ESA-listed GUSG populations, increased risk of non-native plant invasion, and climate warming. These circumstances highlight new risks, information needs, and opportunities for key knowledge co-production via management-research partnerships.

opencc-by-4.0Apr 2023View details →

Setup of a 3D printed wind tunnel: application for calibrating bi-directional velocity probes used in Fire Engineering Applications

The research presented here focuses on the development of a 3D printed wind tunnel and the relevant equipment to be used for calibrating bi-directional velocity probes (BDVP). BDVP are equipment to be used for measuring velocity flow by determining the pressure difference of hot gases generated during fires. The manufactured probes require calibration to determine the calibration factor to achieve precise measurement. The calibration is usually performed in wind tunnels which can be difficult to access due to costs, complexity and the various pieces of equipment required. The aim of the current study is to develop and assemble an inexpensive and easy-to-build bench-scale wind tunnel, with a data-logging system and fan control functionalities for fast and effective calibration of BDVP. A 3D printer with a PET-G filament is used, able to produce parts for the wind tunnel system which are durable and easy to handle and assemble. The system additionally includes an Arduino-based measuring unit with a hot-wire anemometer and temperature correction: Rev. P. This takes precise measurements; continuously logging data on a computer through a USB interface and capable of saving data on an SD card. This design provides users with parameters of velocity flow up to 4 m/s with standard deviation of 1.2 % and turbulence intensity of 1 %. The main advantages of this wind tunnel are its simplicity to build and portability. The dataset contains design files for 3D printing of the wind tunnel, BOM and wiring of electronic components. The project is prototype under development and authors are not responsible for any damages or injuries caused by inappropriate construction or operation. This source is distributed WITHOUT ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTY, INCLUDING OF MERCHANTABILITY, SATISFACTORY QUALITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Fire severity as a key determinant of aboveground and belowground biological community recovery in managed even-aged boreal forests

Changes in fire regime of boreal forests in response to climate warming are expected to impact post-fire recovery. However, quantitative data on how managed forests sustain and recover from recent fire disturbance are limited. Two years after a large wildfire in managed even-aged boreal forests in Sweden, we investigated how recovery of aboveground and belowground communities, i.e., understory vegetation and soil microbial and faunal communities, responded to variation in the severity of soil (i.e., consumption of soil organic matter) and canopy fires (i.e., tree mortality). While fire overall enhanced diversity of understory vegetation through colonization of fire adapted plant species, it reduced the abundance and diversity of soil biota. We observed contrasting effects of tree- and soil-related fire severity on survival and recovery of understory vegetation and soil biological communities. Severe fires that killed overstory Pinus sylvestris promoted a successional stage dominated by the mosses Ceratodon purpureus and Polytrichum juniperum, but reduced regeneration of tree seedlings and disfavoured the ericaceous dwarf-shrub Vaccinium vitis-idaea and the grass Deschampsia flexuosa. Moreover, high tree mortality from fire reduced fungal biomass and changed fungal community composition, in particular that of ectomycorrhizal fungi, and reduced the fungivorous soil Oribatida. In contrast, soil-related fire severity had little impact on vegetation composition, fungal communities and soil animals. Bacterial communities responded to both tree- and soil-related fire severity. Synthesis: Our results two years post-fire suggest that a change in fire regime from a historically low-severity ground-fire regime, with fires that mainly burns into the soil organic layer, to a stand-replacing fire regime with a high degree of tree mortality, as may be expected with climate change, is likely to impact the short-term recovery of stand structure and above- and belowground species composition of even-aged P. sylvestris boreal forests.

Effects of long-term fixed fire regimes on African savanna vegetation biomass, vertical structure and tree stem density

<ol> <li>Fire plays an integral role in shaping the vegetation structure of savanna ecosystems. However, effects of fire regime characteristics, such as frequency and season of burn, on savanna vegetation structure, biomass and tree abundance across landscape types are largely unknown. </li> <li>We used high-resolution airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) to investigate the long-term effects of fire manipulation on savanna vegetation in Kruger National Park, South Africa. We analysed the effects of fire exclusion and experimental burns every 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 years and during different seasons on aboveground biomass (AGB), tree stem densities and vegetation vertical height profiles across a rainfall gradient and on contrasting geologies. </li> <li>Across savanna types, and especially in drier savannas, fire season was more influential for constraining AGB than was fire frequency. Plots experiencing fires during the late- and mid-dry season had 44.50% and 43.60%, respectively, lower AGB relative to unburnt plots than wet-season fires. However, in mesic savannas, fire frequency interacted with fire season to influence AGB: plots subjected to high frequency, dry season fires had 55.35% lower AGB than unburnt plots, whereas plots burnt in the wet season at lower frequencies had lower AGB (24.40% lower than unburnt plots) than plots subjected to high frequency, wet-season fires (13.74% lower AGB than unburnt plots). </li> <li>Fire regimes had variable effects on tree densities, and effects varied with savanna type. Woody vertical vegetation profiles showed the largest differences in response to dry season fires, with the greatest divergence in vegetation height classes < 5m. </li> <li>Synthesis and applications. Understanding the influence of fire regimes on vegetation structure has important implications for the management of savanna heterogeneity, and for predicting trajectories of change in savanna vegetation as fire regimes vary with climate change. We show that the magnitude of the effect of fire on woody vegetation structure varies with savanna context. Our results suggest that heterogeneous vegetation structure can be achieved by applying fires in the dry season in mesic savannas, whereas in dry savannas, variation in fire regimes is less consequential for constraining biomass accumulation and altering vegetation structure. </li> </ol>

opencc-by-4.0Apr 2023View details →

Global biomass fires and infant mortality

This repository provides the data and code accompanying the paper "Global biomass fires and infant mortality"

Henslow's Sparrow shows positive response to prescribed fire rotation data

We examined Henslow's Sparrow (Centronyx henslowii) response to prescribed fire at 32 grasslands at Big Oaks National Wildlife Refuge in southeastern Indiana from 1999–2009. We burned grasslands in the spring between 1999 and 2007 and monitored Henslow's Sparrows for up to 4 years after treatment. We used linear mixed models to analyze our data. Henslow's Sparrow counts were correlated with time since prescribed fire and grassland size. The estimated changes in mean Henslow's Sparrow density relative to pre-burn densities were -0.19, 1.15, 0.74, and -0.68 birds per hectare for 1 to 4 breeding seasons after a spring burn, respectively. We found that Henslow's Sparrows preferred larger grasslands both during the first breeding season after prescribed fire, when vegetation was presumed to possess less litter and structural density, and during the fourth breeding season after fire, when vegetation was presumed to be a more ideal composition, but preferred smaller grasslands in the interim. Thus, grassland size shapes the magnitude of Henslow's Sparrow population response to fire, with populations in smaller grasslands experiencing greater amplitude changes. Larger grasslands might provide more habitat diversity following prescribed fire, attenuating population change. On average, Henslow's Sparrows responded positively to prescribed fire in a network of grasslands and cumulative net change in densities were highest three breeding seasons after a burn, suggesting that maintaining this burn frequency would be beneficial to Henslow's Sparrow abundance.

Prescribed fire is an effective restoration measure for increasing boreal fungal diversity

Intensive forestry practices have had a negative impact on boreal forest biodiversity, subsequently, the need for restoration is pressing. Polypores (wood-inhabiting fungi) are key decomposers of dead-wood, but due to the lack of coarse woody debris (CWD) in forest ecosystems, many species are threatened. Here, we study the long-term effects on polypore diversity of two restoration treatments; creating CWD by felling whole trees and prescribed burning. This large-scale experiment is located in spruce-dominated boreal forests in southern Finland. The experiment has a factorial design (n=3) including three levels of created CWD (5, 30 and 60 m3 ha-1) crossed with burning or no burning. In 2018, 16 years after the initiation, we inventoried polypores on ten experimentally cut logs and ten naturally fallen logs per stand. We found that overall polypore community composition differed between burned and unburned stands. However, only red-listed species' abundances and richness were positively affected by prescribed burning. We found no effects of CWD levels created mechanically by felling of trees. We show, for the first time, that prescribed burning is an effective measure for restoring polypore diversity in late-successional Norway spruce forest. Burning creates CWD with certain characteristics that differ from what is created by CWD-restoration by felling trees. Prescribed burning promotes primarily red-listed species, demonstrating its effectiveness as a restoration measure to promote diversity of threatened polypore species in boreal forest. However, as the CWD that the burning creates will decrease over time, to be functional, prescribed burns need to be applied regularly at the landscape scale. Large-scale and long-term experimental studies, such as this one, are invaluable for establishing evidence-based restoration strategies.

Restoration temporarily supports the resilience of sagebrush-steppe ecosystems subjected to repeated fires

Many ecosystems are experiencing increased fire frequencies and species invasions that can erode their resilience and cause a shift to alternative states. In the sagebrush-steppe, a semi-arid shrubland ecosystem in North America, restoration treatments are often implemented following wildfire to enhance their resilience to invasion. However, little is known about the long-term effectiveness of these treatments. We investigated whether repeated restoration efforts provide greater resilience in sagebrush-steppe communities initially dominated by species with different post-fire regeneration traits and subjected to compounding wildfires and invasion by Bromus tectorum over 25 years. We studied 37 permanent transects (Columbia Basin, Washington, USA) in which species abundance was recorded multiple times from 1992 to 2017. We quantified community change and its relationship with fire, restoration, and moisture availability. Resilience was evaluated by quantifying community resistance and stability indices. The greatest change occurred in communities where the obligate seeding shrub Artemisia tridentata was initially common. Repeated fires led to the extirpation of this shrub and eventual dominance of B. tectorum. Herbicide applications temporarily suppressed B. tectorum post-fire. Seeding treatments and above average precipitation initially increased native cover. Although communities where resprouting species were common showed the least change, repeated fires did lead to a gradual but substantial decline (86%) in resprouting shrubs. Synthesis and applications: Our findings show that repeated restoration efforts, together with elevated precipitation, can support native species re-establishment in systems experiencing altered disturbance regimes and species invasions. Our unique long-term dataset demonstrates, however, that many such interventions have short-lived effects due to the strong "unhelpful resilience" of highly invaded systems. This implicitly suggests that many such systems have experienced fundamental shifts in ecosystem state. The likelihood of this occurring is strongly associated with the dominant species post-fire regeneration traits. We predict that community composition and resilience will continue to degrade in the sagebrush-steppe unless management prioritizes fire suppression and an adaptive restoration approach that considers resource availability.

opencc-by-4.0Mar 2023View details →

Data for Western U.S. Lightning-Fire-Precipitation paper

This repository contains supporting data for the manuscript titled "Lightning-ignited wildfires in the western United States: ignition precipitation and associated environmental conditions " by Kalashnikov et al. (2023). Please contact me with any questions at dmitri.kalashnikov@wsu.edu. -Dmitri

opencc-by-4.0Jun 2023View details →

Fire chronology in the Central highlands of Vietnam.

Fire-scar chronology for Vietnam's Central Highland.

opencc-by-4.0Jun 2023View details →

Anthropogenic Specular Interference in the Operational GOES-R Fire Product

Dataset for the research paper "Anthropogenic Specular Interference in the Operational GOES-R Fire Product". Large reflective structures like solar power plants and commercial greenhouses sometimes reflect sunlight directly into GOES-R sensors. These anthropogenic specular reflections, or "sparkles", cause commission errors in operational GOES-R ABI products like the Fire Detection and Characterization Algorithm (FDCA). Using the abi-sparkle library for Python (Dove-Robinson, 2023), we generated a dataset containing both detected anthropogenic specular reflection pixels and the coincident FDCA commission errors caused by them for the GOES-16 CONUS domain during the 2020 calendar year. The dataset consists of two exported PostgreSQL tables: sparkle_pixels_g16_abi_conus_2020, which contains the detected anthropogenic specular reflection pixels at 500 m resolution, and fdca_commission_error_clusters_g16_abi_conus_2020, which contains clustered FDCA false alarm fire pixels caused by anthropogenic specular reflection at 2 km resolution. The FDCA pixels were only processed for fire mask codes 10-15 and 30-35; see Table 3.11 in Schmidt et al., 2013 for fire code definitions. Each row in sparkle_pixels_g16_abi_conus_2020 is a detected specular reflection pixel in a GOES-16 CONUS image from the 2020 calendar year with a unique numeric ID sparkle_id and associated metadata from the detection algorithm abi-sparkle. The column sparkle_geom is a PostGIS geometry ST_Point object that can be used to plot the pixels on a map. FDCA fire pixels at 2 km resolution were clustered based on their connectivity in a 3x3 pixel kernel and assigned a UUID fire_cluster_id in the table fdca_commission_error_clusters_g16_abi_conus_2020. Only the fire clusters that overlapped with sparkle pixels in time and space were retained in the table. In this way, each row of fdca_commission_error_clusters_g16_abi_conus_2020 is a unique cluster of errant FDCA fire pixels caused by anthropogenic specular reflection in every available scan start time for the GOES-16 CONUS domain in 2020. Every fire cluster centroid has a PostGIS geometry object fire_cluster_centroid_geom that can be used to plot the errant fire pixel clusters on a map. The two tables relate with the column sparkle_ids in fdca_commission_error_clusters_g16_abi_conus_2020, which is an array of overlapping sparkle IDs from the sparkle_pixels_g16_abi_conus_2020 table. The combined dataset may therefore be generated with a simple SQL INNER JOIN: SELECT * FROM fdca_commission_error_clusters_g16_abi_conus_2020 fcecgac INNER JOIN sparkle_pixels_g16_abi_conus_2020 spgac ON spgac.sparkle_id = ANY(fcecgac.sparkle_ids); The tables can be imported into a PostgreSQL database version 12 or newer with PostGIS extensions installed. For example, to import the tables into a database in a Linux environment, run the following commands: gunzip -c sparkle_pixels_g16_abi_conus_2020.sql.gz | psql -d your_database_name gunzip -c fdca_commission_error_clusters_g16_abi_conus_2020.sql.gz | psql -d your_database_name