Schmoldt, Daniel L.; Peterson, David L.; Keane, Robert E.; Lenihan, James M.; McKenzie, Donald; Weise, David R.; Sandberg, David V. 1999. Assessing the effects of fire disturbance on ecosystems: a scientific agenda for research and management. Gen. Tech. Rep. PNW-GTR-455. Portland, OR: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Northwest Research Station. 104 p. A team of fire scie...

Interest in the use of summer fires to restore southern Great Plains prairie ecosystems infested with woody plants and cactus is increasing, but information regarding effects on target and nontarget plant species is needed before this practice can be recommended. We review effects of summer and winter fires on mortality and growth of honey mesquite (Prosopis glandulosa), prickly pear (Opuntia p...

The southern region of the U.S. uses prescribed fire as a management tool on more of its burnable land than anywhere in the U.S., with ecosystem restoration, wildlife habitat enhancement, and reduction of hazardous fuel loads as typical goals. Although the region performs more than 50,000 prescribed fire treatments each year, evaluation of their effects on wildfire suppression resources or beha...

In Southern European countries wildfires are the most natural threat to forests and wooded areas. Over the last decade, public and scientific debates on forest fire management have increased. Helicopters and airtankers are extremely effective fire suppression means, but they are also very expensive. Studies on the improved performance of suppression for the enhancement of firefighting organizat...

Counterinsurgency (COIN) operations start with discipline – the discipline to understand and execute a balance between kinetic and non-kinetic operations in shaping the battlespace and specific Target Audiences (TAs). Kinetic operations are actions in the battlespace that involve direct fires, indirect fires and other resources specifically intended to violently kill the enemy. Non-kinetic oper...

In July 2014, Sweden’s full crisis response system engaged in a major operation as a small forest fire spun out of control, turning into the largest forest fire in Sweden in modern times. A number of investigations have been undertaken to understand the course of the fire and identify lessons for future crisis management. This paper presents one approach to identifying such lessons, the lessons...

The growing population in Puebla City these last couple of years entailed the expansion of its original urban area. The most recent settlements have established on areas that are highly exposed to natural disasters, thus, requiring the proper emergency service coverage provided by Fire Stations. To assure this kind of service coverage, the current fire stations in Puebla City were evaluated thr...

An analysis of forest fires by using a partitioned probability distribution is presented. Area burned during afire is fitted to a probability model. This model is partitioned into small, medium, and large fires. Conditional expected values are computed for each partition. Two cases are presented: the two-parameter Weibull and the Truncated Shifted Pareto probability models. The methodology allo...

Challenges associated with the allocation of limited resources to mitigate the impact of natural disasters inspire fundamentally new theoretical questions for dynamic decision making in coupled human and natural systems. Wildfires are one of several types of disaster phenomena, including oil spills and disease epidemics, where (1) the disaster evolves on the same timescale as the response effor...