Fire and Ecosystems
The majority of U.S. forests and grasslands are adapted to fire. Past management actions such as grazing, introduction of non-native species, and organized fire suppression, have drastically altered historical fire regimes. Climate change and increasing human expansion into wildlands are further exacerbating changes to vegetation and fuels from historical conditions. Changes in vegetation and fuels patterns, coupled with climate change, also affect biotic disturbances that interact with wildland fire. These interactions and stresses are changing contemporary fire regimes, degrading ecosystem resilience and altering fuel hazard. Knowledge of fire effects and ecology in fire-dependent ecosystems is essential to develop fuel-related products, treatment alternatives, restoration strategies, and accurate forecasting of future conditions.
Projects in Fire and Ecosystems
Displaying 1 - 46 of 46
| A Century of Change in a Ponderosa Pine Forest 1909-present |
Living things change constantly, as do communities of living things. In a forest, where individual trees can live for centuries and new plants replace old plants, it is not easy to visualize the changes that occur over time. This photoseries documents changes in a ponderosa pine forest from 1909 to 2015. Download high-resolution photos here. See… |
| ArcFuels 2005-present |
Vegetation and fuel management planning is a complex problem that requires advanced vegetation and fire behavior modeling and intensive spatial data analyses. Both the benefits and potential impacts of proposed treatments must be clearly demonstrated in the context of land management goals and public expectations. Potential fire behavior metrics,… |
| Assessing community wildfire exposure 2016-present |
The first comprehensive assessment of where public wildlands in the Western US potentially contribute wildfire exposure to communities. Predicting wildfire disasters presents a major challenge to the field of risk science, especially when fires are propagated over long distances through diverse fuel types and complex terrain. A good example is in… |
| Black Carbon from Fires in Northern Eurasia 2002-Present |
Northern Eurasia covers 20% of the global land mass and contains 70% of the boreal forest. During certain times of the year, black carbon (BC) in smoke plumes at high latitudes may be transported and deposited on Arctic ice, thereby accelerating ice melting. It is thus imperative to better understand daily sources, transport, and deposition of BC… |
| Climate Change on Global Fire Danger 2014-present |
Wildfires occur at the intersection of dry weather, available fuel, and ignition sources. Weather is the most variable and largest driver of regional burned area. Temperature, relative humidity, precipitation, and wind speed independently influence wildland fire spread rates and intensities. The alignment of multiple weather extremes, such as the… |
| Describing Wildland Fuels 2012-Present |
Considerable effort is expended to determine fuel loadings and to map those loadings across the landscape, yet there is little or no work being done to determine how to incorporate those measurements into the next generation of fire behavior models, such as physics-based models. Identifying critical spatial and temporal fuel characteristics… |
| Evaluating Fuel Treatment Effectiveness 2013-present |
Increasingly intense fire seasons, rapidly changing ecosystems, and an expanding wildland-urban interface all increase the hazard that fires pose to communities, watersheds, and ecosystems. Fuel treatments offer managers an opportunity to proactively mitigate threats to firefighters and communities as well as to maintain or restore healthy… |
| FastFuels: 3D Fuels for Next Generation Fire Models 2020-present |
Advanced 3D fire models offer new possibilities for detailed analysis of fuel treatments and prescribed fires. However, the spatially explicit, detailed 3D fuels data they require is difficult to get, particularly for large areas. FastFuels opens the door to this kind of modeling by combining existing fuels and spatial data with cutting edge… |
| Fire Effects Information System (FEIS) 1986-present |
Thousands of scientific articles and reports are published each year on wildland fire, making it difficult for managers, planners, and scientists to find, read, and use the best available science. A team of ecologists reviews this information and publishes syntheses online in the Fire Effects Information System (FEIS), so managers can easily find… |
| Fire Lab Seminar Series The Seminar Series runs from Fall to Spring |
Please note that our seminar series will begin again on November 7, 2024. The Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory has been hosting an annual seminar series since 1998. Hour-long seminars are presented by Fire Lab employees and other researchers from throughout the world. Seminars cover current research and management about the natural world from a… |
| Fire-Induced Tree Mortality 2011-present |
This project is a continuation and expansion of several past research projects on fire-induced tree mortality. Please see individual project page for details on specific projects (Douglas-fir and Fire, Reintroducing Fire into Long-unburned Forests, Wildfire effects in grand fir-hemlock forests). Tree mortality is an obvious and important… |
| FireBGCv2 - landscape fire model 1990-present |
FireBGCv2 is a computer modeling program and platform that mechanistically simulates fire, vegetation, climate, and fuels dynamics across multiple space and time scales. The spatially explicit ecosystem process model FireBGCv2 is a landscape fire and vegetation model C++ computer program that incorporates several types of stand dynamics models… |
| Firefighter Safety Zone Research 2010 -present |
New research is focused on measuring and predicting the cumulative impact of convective and radiant energy transfer on safety zone size, shape, and location when the safety zone and/or fires are located on slopes or are burning under the influence of wind. Field measurements and a newly developed modeling tool (SSDE) are used to explore the… |
| FIREHARM - Fire hazard and risk model 2008-present |
Mapping fire hazard and risk across multiple spatial scales. This project involves the development of a research computer model called FIREHARM (FIRE HAzard and Risk Model) that computes common measures of fire behavior, fire danger, and fire effects over space to use as variables to portray fire hazard spatially, and then computes fire risk by… |
| FOFEM/SpatialFOFEM - fire effects model 1995- present |
FOFEM FOFEM (a First Order Fire Effects Model) is a computer program for predicting tree mortality, fuel consumption, smoke production, and soil heating caused by prescribed fire or wildfire. First order fire effects are those that concern the direct or indirect or immediate consequences of fire. First order fire effects form an important… |
| ForSys - Scenario planning model 2017 - present |
ForSys - Scenario planning model for multi-objective restoration and fuel management planning ForSys is a flexible platform for exploring landscape management scenarios and optimizing decisions in terms of where and how to achieve landscape restoration and fuel management goals. The model is spatially explicit and uses multi-criteria… |
| FuelCalc - Canopy fuel calculator and model 2006-present |
FuelCalc is a desktop software application for determining changes in surface and crown fuel loading after thinning, pruning, piling and/or prescribed fire. Ground, surface, and canopy fuel characteristics serve as essential inputs to computer models of fire behavior and fire effects. FuelCalc is a software system for assisting local and regional… |
| Fuels and Potential Fire Behavior in Balsam Woolly Adelgid-impacted Forests 2020-present |
We are developing a product and methodology that allows rapid assessment of fuels and potential fire hazard in forests impacted by the non-native balsam woolly adelgid (BWA) to better protect and improve the health of western America’s high-elevation fir forests. We will 1) compare fuel metrics derived from standard field procedures with aerial… |
| LANDFIRE – Landscape Fire and Resource Management Planning 2004 - present |
This multi-partner program produces consistent, comprehensive, geospatial data and databases that describe vegetation, wildland fuel, and fire regimes across the United States and insular areas. LF's mission is to provide agency leaders and managers with a common "all-lands" data set of vegetation and wildland fire/fuels information for strategic… |
| Lodgepole fire history 2017-present |
Lodgepole pine-dominated forest is the third most extensive forest type in western North America, covering 15 million acres in the western United States. Over much of this extensive range, surprisingly little is known about historical fire regimes. While these regimes are commonly characterized as infrequent and stand-replacing, like those found… |
| Long term wildfire management in areas near Chernobyl 2013 - present |
This project examined natural and human drivers of wildfires in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl explosion. This project investigated the issue of radionuclide resuspension from wildland fires in areas contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion. The work was originated from a scientific exchange among scientists from the USDA… |
| Long-term restoration synergies 2016 - present |
Long-term restoration synergies between wildfire and forest management on fire frequent landscapes. Our objective was to examine whether accelerated management can maintain or promote desired ecological conditions under potential future fire regimes that are amplified by either climate, fire management policies, or a combination of the two. We… |
| LSim forest landscape management model 2017- present |
The Forest Vegetation Simulator was integrated with the FSim wildfire simulation model to conduct research on long term management and wildfire feedbacks. Forest landscape models (FLMs) are important tools used to address a wide range of forest management policy tradeoffs on public and private forests. Several recent studies using FLMs have… |
| Lubrecht Fire-Fire Surrogate Study 2000-present |
Fire frequency in low-elevation coniferous forests in western North America has greatly declined since the late 1800s. In many areas, this has increased tree density and the proportion of shade- tolerant species, reduced resource availability, and increased forest susceptibility to forest insect pests and high-severity wildfire. In response,… |
| Mann Gulch History 1949-present |
On August 5, 1949, the Mann Gulch Fire broke out on the Helena National Forest and ultimately took the lives of 13 firefighters. This incident underscored the need for scientific study of fire behavior and directly led to the development of the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory, the 10 Standard Firefighting Orders and the National Technology and… |
| Mapping and modeling fuels and fire at the Sycan Marsh, Oregon 2017 - present |
The research being performed through multidisciplinary collaboration efforts at TNC’s Sycan Marsh Preserve in Oregon is providing much needed data for fuel mapping efforts by linking surface fuel datasets with TLS and UAS data pre, during, and post-fire. It also provides essential data for fire mapping and behavioral understanding of forest and… |
| National Fire Danger Rating System 1994-present |
NFDRS applications involve two steps: a historical analysis to set appropriate fire danger breakpoints and an operational system to provide NFDRS fuel moistures and indices in real-time. Historical analyses are performed by combining fire weather and fire occurrence data in Fire Family Plus. Operational indices are produced by the Weather… |
| New & Improved 7-Day Wildland Fire Outlook 2017-present |
RMC is developing a system of statistical weather-based models for forecasting wildland fire potential & fire risk out to 7-10 days on a uniform national grid. The development of this gridded system of predictive equations has been planned to proceed in 4 phases with R&D tasks being executed under a Joint Venture Agreement with Colorado… |
| Photoload - Visually estimating fuel loading 2005 - present |
The Photoload method is a fuel sampling method to quickly and accurately estimate loadings for surface fuel components using downward-looking and oblique photographs depicting sequences of graduated fuel loadings by fuel component. Estimates of fuel loadings in forest and rangeland ecosystems of the United States are critical for accurately… |
| Ponderosa Pine Restoration and Fuel Hazard Reduction at Lick Creek 1991 - current |
See: A Century of Change in a Ponderosa Pine Forest for more information about the Historical Photopoints in the Lick Creek Drainage. Lick Creek is the longest running fuel treatment and restoration study in the western United States. The study area is located in the northern Rocky Mountains of the United States in a ponderosa pine dominated… |
| Predicting Tree Growth and Beetle Susceptibility After Fire 2019-present |
We are creating tools to inform post-fire decisions that predict post-fire growth rates and mortality levels due to fire alone or fire+beetle for ponderosa pine (PP) and Douglas-fir (DF). The models in the tools will account for tree size, fire injury, site productivity, changes in competition, and beetle pressure. The project will also validate… |
| Real-Time Forecasting of Wildfire Ignitions out to 7 Days 2017-2024 |
The RMRS Rocky Mountain Center (RMC) developed a comprehensive georeferenced model for predicting wildfire starts out to 7 days based on forecast weather and data on vegetation cover and recent drought history. The fire-management community had a long-standing need for quantitative predictions of wildfire-ignition chances up to 10 days in advance… |
| Removing barriers to prescribed burning to achieve tree mortality-related objectives 2024-present |
A major goal of forest restoration and fuels management is reducing risk of high-severity fire and building resilience, yet currently there is high uncertainty about when and where prescribed fire can be used to successfully reduce forest density and ladder fuels via killing unwanted trees that cause high fire hazard while simultaneously… |
| RWPE - Restoring Whitebark Pine Ecosystems 1993-present |
Evaluating effects of various prescribed burning and silvicultural techniques used for restoring whitebark pine ecosystems (RWPE) The loss of whitebark pine is serious for upper subalpine ecosystems because it is considered a keystone species across most of its range, producing large seeds that are an important food source for more than 110… |
| RxCadre Project 2012-present |
Obtaining Integrated, Quality-assured Fuels, Fire, and Atmospheric Data for Development and Evaluation of Fuels, Fire Behavior, Smoke, and Fire Effects Models The lack of co-located, multi-scale measures of pre-fire fuels, active fire processes, and post-fire effects hinders our ability to tackle fundamental fire science questions. The lack of… |
| Scenario Planning 2017- present |
The USDA Forest Service Scenario Investment Planning Platform was developed by Forest Service Research & Development to help the agency modernize its approach to prioritizing land management investments. The system can be used to model spatially explicit management scenarios across scales ranging from projects, forests, regions, states, and… |
| SERDP RC20-Closing Gaps 2020-present |
This project responds to the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP)’s FY 2020 Statement of Need: “DoD WILDLAND FIRE MANAGEMENT RESEARCH FOR IMPROVED MILITARY LAND USE”, for which the overarching objective was “to improve understanding of self-organization of convective structures and near-fire smoke plume development for… |
| Spring Dip 2012-Present |
Both firefighters and fire scientists have observed a period of peak crown fire activity in the Great Lakes area during spring when a dip in foliar moisture content occurs. For decades, the cause and timing of this ‘dip’ have been poorly understood. It is therefore important to understand the drivers of this dip in order to improve wildland… |
| Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest 1961-present |
For a more indepth overview, see our TCEF Story Map. The Tenderfoot Creek Experimental Forest (TCEF) encompasses the headwaters of Tenderfoot Creek in the Little Belt mountains of central Montana.TCEF is uniquely suited to study lodgepole pine ecology and forest hydrology. Image The Tenderfoot Creek… |
| Terrestrial lidar scanners and TreeQSM 3D fuels modeling 2020-present |
Using destructive samplings methods and a Leica BLK360 terrestrial lidar scanner (TLS), we measured and scanned 20 small diameter trees. We then compare our lab-based results to the 3D quantitative structure model output retrieved from inputting our point clouds into TreeQSM code. Airborne laser scans (ALS; also referred to as airborne LiDAR)… |
| TreeMap: A tree-level model of the forests of the United States 2012-present |
Machine learning matched forest plot data with biophysical characteristics of the landscape to produce a seamless tree-level forest map. The TreeMap 2016 dataset is a spatial model of the trees in continental US forests. It provides detailed spatial information on forest characteristics including a list of trees for each pixel (with tree species… |
| U.S. Wildfires 2010-present |
A Spatial Database of U.S. Wildfires Wildfire occurrence records provide baseline information that is essential for wildfire management and research in the United States. However, there are multiple federal, state, and local entities with wildfire protection and reporting responsibilities in the United States, and no single, unified system of… |
| Wildfire Effects in Grand fir-hemlock Forests 2016-present |
Wildfires burning in mesic mixed-conifer forests provide an opportunity to understand fire-induced tree mortality and subsequent regeneration dynamics. The Grizzly and Tower wildfires burned on the Idaho Panhandle National Forest during the summer of 2015. These fires burned in areas of mesic forests dominated by mixed conifer consisting… |
| Wildfire Hazard Potential 2008-present |
Wildfire Hazard Potential* for the United States The wildfire hazard potential (WHP) map is a raster geospatial product produced by the USDA Forest Service, Fire Modeling Institute that can help to inform evaluations of wildfire hazard or prioritization of fuels management needs across very large landscapes.Our specific objective with the WHP map… |
| Wildfire Risk in the Sagebrush Biome 2020-present |
A quantitative wildfire risk assessment is underway for the sagebrush biome in the western US to inform investments in hazardous fuel treatments, including those intended to protect sage-grouse habitat. Within the Great Basin alone, hundreds of thousands of acres of highly imperiled sagebrush ecosystems are lost or degraded each year as a result… |
| Wildfire Risk to Communities 2020-present |
Wildfire Risk to Communities is a free, easy-to-use website with interactive maps, charts, and resources to help communities understand, explore, and reduce wildfire risk. The website was created by the USDA Forest Service under the direction of Congress and is designed to be a starting point to help community leaders, such as elected officials,… |