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Climate Effects on U.S. Agriculture and Forests
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Climate change effects are already evident in U.S. forests and agroecosystems. We are on the cusp of additional and potentially more severe effects, primarily facilitated by increased frequency and magnitude of extreme weather events (drought, heavy rainfall, heat waves) and associated disturbances (wildfires, insect outbreaks).
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Webinars
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Fire Neural Network - FNN
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FNN™ detects High-Risk-Lightning™ (HRL™) using its proprietary detector, and pairs this information with real-time environmental data using AI signal processing adapted from astrophysics to Find Fires Lightning Fast℠.
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A Guide to Staying Safe During Wildfires
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This all-in-one guide delivers the essential strategies and tactics to keep you safe from wildfire — no matter where you live.
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Landowner Information
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Landowner Resources
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Western Oregon University CERT Resources
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CERT is about readiness, people helping people, rescuer safety...
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Landowner Resources
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Colorado State University Extension Fire Resources
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The most up-to-date fire-related resources, from CSU Extension and our partnering agencies.
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Landowner Resources
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Driftless Prairies: Native Ecosystems-The Interaction of Fire and Grass
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Understanding the biology and physiology of grass in management decisions
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Landowner Resources
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From Flames to Forests: Past, Present, and Future Fires for Sustaining Our Forests and Wildlife
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This webinar will feature some of the leading researchers and practitioners in fire science to help us understand how to manage our forests with fire under challenging circumstances.
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Conifer regeneration following stand-replacing wildfire varies along an elevation gradient in a ponderosa pine forest, Oregon, USA
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Climate change is expected to increase disturbances such as stand-replacing wildfire in many ecosystems, which have the potential to drive rapid turnover in ecological communities. Ecosystem recovery, and therefore maintenance of critical structures and functions (resilience), is likely to vary across environmental gradients such as moisture availability, but has received little study. We examined conifer regeneration a decade following complete stand-replacing wildfire in dry coniferous forests spanning a 700 m elevation gradient where low elevation sites had relatively high moisture stress due to the combination of high temperature and low precipitation. Conifer regeneration varied strongly across the elevation gradient, with little tree regeneration at warm and dry low elevation sites. Logistic regression models predicted rapid increases in regeneration across the elevation gradient for both seedlings of all conifer species and ponderosa pine seedlings individually. This pattern was especially pronounced for well-established seedlings (P38 cm in height). Graminoids dominated lower elevation sites following wildfire, which may have added to moisture stress for seedlings due to competition for water. These results suggest moisture stress can be a critical factor limiting conifer regeneration following stand- replacing wildfire in dry coniferous forests, with predicted increases in temperature and drought in the coming century likely to increase the importance of moisture stress. Strongly moisture limited forested sites may fail to regenerate for extended periods after stand-replacing disturbance, suggesting these sites are high priorities for management intervention where maintaining forests is a priority.
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Climate Science Documents
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Contingent Pacific-Atlantic Ocean influence on multicentury wildfire synchrony over western North America
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Widespread synchronous wildfires driven by climatic variation, such as those that swept western North America during 1996, 2000, and 2002, can result in major environmental and societal impacts. Understanding relationships between continental-scale patterns of drought and modes of sea surface temperatures (SSTs) such as El Nin ̃o-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO), and Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) may explain how interannual to multidecadal variability in SSTs drives fire at continental scales. We used local wildfire chronologies recon- structed from fire scars on tree rings across western North America and independent reconstructions of SST developed from tree-ring widths at other sites to examine the relationships of multicentury patterns of climate and fire synchrony. From 33,039 annually resolved fire-scar dates at 238 sites (the largest paleofire record yet assembled), we examined forest fires at regional and subconti- nental scales. Since 1550 CE, drought and forest fires covaried across the West, but in a manner contingent on SST modes. During certain phases of ENSO and PDO, fire was synchronous within broad subregions and sometimes asynchronous among those re- gions. In contrast, fires were most commonly synchronous across the West during warm phases of the AMO. ENSO and PDO were the main drivers of high-frequency variation in fire (interannual to decadal), whereas the AMO conditionally changed the strength and spatial influence of ENSO and PDO on wildfire occurrence at multidecadal scales. A current warming trend in AMO suggests that we may expect an increase in widespread, synchronous fires across the western U.S. in coming decades.
Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation El Nino Southern Oscillation fire history network ocean warming Pacific Decadal Oscillation
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Climate Science Documents
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A new, global, multi-annual (2000–2007) burnt area product at 1 km resolution Vol. 35
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This paper reports on the development and validation
of a new, global, burnt area product. Burnt areas are
reported at a resolution of 1 km for seven fire years (2000 to
2007). A modified version of a Global Burnt Area (GBA)
2000 algorithm is used to compute global burnt area. The
total area burnt each year (2000– 2007) is estimated to be
between 3.5 million km2 and 4.5 million km2
. The total
amount of vegetation burnt by cover type according to the
Global Land Cover (GLC) 2000 product is reported.
Validation was undertaken using 72 Landsat TM scenes
was undertaken. Correlation statistics between estimated
burnt areas are reported for major vegetation types. The
accuracy of this new global data set depends on vegetation
type.
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