Prescribed fire applications in forest and woodlands: integration of models and field studies to guide fire use
2010
Ryan, Kevin C. | Rigolot, Eric | Rego, Francisco C. | Botelho, Herminio | Vega, Jose A. | Fernandes, Paulo M. | Sofronova, Tatiana M.
Globally prescribed burning is widely used for agro-forestry, restoration, and conservation to modify species composition and stand structure. Commonly stated goals of prescribed burns include to reduce hazardous fuels, improve species’ habitat, reduce the potential for severe fires in the wildland urban interface or protect municipal watersheds. Treatments may focus primarily on modifying conditions at the stand level or to change the mix of mosaic patches at the landscape level. Given the wide range of vegetation/fuel types, management objectives, and human resources it is not possible to conduct field studies to acquire the empirical data to guide fire use in the full range of applications. The integration of empirically-based models with biophysical process models holds promise for being able to extend our knowledge, develop interim guidelines for prescribed fire applications in novel situations, identify knowledge gaps, and set future research priorities. Based on their experience in forests from North America and Eurasia, the authors have begun to synthesize the fire effects literature and identify common data sets for comparative analysis. This paper reports preliminary results of this effort
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