Best available wildland fire science summaries on hot topics across the Southwest.
Managed Wildfire: A Research Synthesis & Overview
All wildfires in the United States are managed, but the strategies used to manage them vary by region and season. “Managed wildfire” is a response strategy to naturally ignited wildfires; it does not prioritize full suppression and allows the fire to fulfill its natural role on the landscape, meeting objectives such as firefighter safety, resource benefit, and community protection. This…
Mitigating Postfire Runoff and Erosion
Wildfires in the southwestern US are getting larger, more frequent, and more severe due to changing climatic conditions like rising temperatures and prolonged drought (Singleton et al. 2018, Mueller et al. 2020). Catastrophic wildfire events directly impact communities, ecosystems, and cultural resources—and can pose continuing hazards long after the fire is extinguished. Flooding and erosion from heavy rainstorms are postfire…
Fire and Soils in Frequent-Fire Landscapes of the Southwest
Working Paper 43 by Dan Binkley, Adjunct Faculty, School of Forestry, Northern Arizona University Forests and soils interact so strongly that any major change in one of them leads to a reshaping of the other. Fires consume fuels in a few hours that it took vegetation years or decades to produce. Forest soils are both sensitive and robust in relation…
Forest Treatments Impacts to Water Quantity
Working Paper 37 by Dan Binkley Read The influence of restoration treatments on hydrologic output in fire-adapted forests of the Southwest PDF.
Economic Benefits of Forest Treatments
Read the Review of economic benefits from fuel reduction treatments in the fire-prone forests of the Southwestern United States PDF.
Carbon Cycling in Southwestern Forests
SWFSC Working Paper 35 by Tyson L. Swetnam and Donald A. Falk. September 2015 Read the Paper Read a Fact Sheet summary of the paper below. Fact Sheet published October 2015 by Tyson L. Swetnam and Donald A. Falk Carbon Cycling in Southwestern Forests Fact Sheet click to access as pdf
Climate Change and Fire in the Southwest
View working paper. Working Paper 34, June 2015, Author: Larissa L. Yocom Kent