LANDFIRE: a nationally consistent vegetation, wildland fire, and fuel assessment

2009 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew G. Rollins
Keyword(s):  
Fire Management ◽  
Wildland Fire ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Development Programs ◽  
Department Of Agriculture ◽  
Management Planning ◽  
Vegetation Modelling ◽  
The Us ◽  
Data Products

LANDFIRE is a 5-year, multipartner project producing consistent and comprehensive maps and data describing vegetation, wildland fuel, fire regimes and ecological departure from historical conditions across the United States. It is a shared project between the wildland fire management and research and development programs of the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service and US Department of the Interior. LANDFIRE meets agency and partner needs for comprehensive, integrated data to support landscape-level fire management planning and prioritization, community and firefighter protection, effective resource allocation, and collaboration between agencies and the public. The LANDFIRE data production framework is interdisciplinary, science-based and fully repeatable, and integrates many geospatial technologies including biophysical gradient analyses, remote sensing, vegetation modelling, ecological simulation, and landscape disturbance and successional modelling. LANDFIRE data products are created as 30-m raster grids and are available over the internet at www.landfire.gov, accessed 22 April 2009. The data products are produced at scales that may be useful for prioritizing and planning individual hazardous fuel reduction and ecosystem restoration projects; however, the applicability of data products varies by location and specific use, and products may need to be adjusted by local users.

Deportations and development: Responding to El Salvador’s new migration crisis

2020 ◽  
pp. 026909422098105
Author(s):  
Nik Theodore
Keyword(s):  
El Salvador ◽  
Workforce Development ◽  
The United States ◽  
Development Programs ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The Us ◽  
Housing Shortages ◽  
Migration Crisis ◽  
Us Cities ◽  
Economic Development Strategies

For decades El Salvador has been reliant on migration, mainly to the US, to provide remittances and an outlet for widespread underemployment. The deportation of tens of thousands of migrants annually by the United States, however, threatens to exacerbate problems of joblessness, poverty, and informality in local economies, calling into question the suitability of prevailing economic development strategies. This study proposes an alternative approach—labor force-based development—that was initially proposed to assist US cities confronting widespread job losses following deindustrialization. Through a survey of 198 Salvadorans who were apprehended by US immigration authorities and deported, this article documents deportees’ employment experiences in El Salvador and the US, tenure in their primary occupation, education and training obtained, and the localities to which they will return. It also provides recommendations for improving the employment outcomes of deportees. Given that a substantial proportion of deportees have worked in the construction industry, opportunities exist for designing workforce development programs that meet the needs of jobseekers as well as local communities facing housing shortages.

Letters to the Editor

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 68 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-473
Author(s):  
David B. Nelson ◽  
Renate D. Kimbrough ◽  
Philip S. Landrigan ◽  
A. Wallace Hayes ◽  
George C. Yang ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Drug Administration ◽  
Food Supply ◽  
Food Industry ◽  
The United States ◽  
Letters To The Editor ◽  
Department Of Agriculture ◽  
The Us ◽  
The World ◽  
Food Commodities

Dr Wray's comments are, of course, very appropriate and encouraging. Aflatoxin was first detected in food commodities from other parts of the world. As concentrations in other parts of the world have usually been higher, little attention has been paid to the possibility of aflatoxin exposure in humans in the United States except by those who are directly involved in monitoring the human food supply (US Department of Agriculture, the food industry, and the US Food and Drug Administration).

Statistical Inference in Economics in the 1920s and 1930s

2021 ◽  
Vol 53 (6) ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
Jeff Biddle
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Probability Theory ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Statistical Inference ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Interesting Case ◽  
Agricultural Products ◽  
Department Of Agriculture ◽  
The Us

Statistical inference is the process of drawing conclusions from samples of statistical data about things not fully described or recorded in those samples. During the 1920s, economists in the United States articulated a general approach to statistical inference that downplayed the value of the inferential measures derived from probability theory that later came to be central to the idea of statistical inference in economics. This approach is illustrated by the practices of economists of the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the US Department of Agriculture, who regularly analyzed statistical samples to forecast supplies of various agricultural products. Forecasting represents an interesting case for studying the development of inferential methods, as analysts receive regular feedback on the effectiveness of their inferences when forecasts are compared with actual events.

scholarly journals Visualizing When, Where, and How Fires Happen in U.S. Parks and Protected Areas

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 333
Author(s):  
Nicole C. Inglis ◽  
Jelena Vukomanovic
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Protected Areas ◽  
National Park ◽  
Fire History ◽  
National Park Service ◽  
Fire Management ◽  
Fire Regime ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
The United States ◽  
Park Service

Fire management in protected areas faces mounting obstacles as climate change alters disturbance regimes, resources are diverted to fighting wildfires, and more people live along the boundaries of parks. Evidence-based prescribed fire management and improved communication with stakeholders is vital to reducing fire risk while maintaining public trust. Numerous national fire databases document when and where natural, prescribed, and human-caused fires have occurred on public lands in the United States. However, these databases are incongruous and non-standardized, making it difficult to visualize spatiotemporal patterns of fire and engage stakeholders in decision-making. We created interactive decision analytics (“VISTAFiRe”) that transform fire history data into clear visualizations of the spatial and temporal dimensions of fire and its management. We demonstrate the utility of our approach using Big Cypress National Preserve and Everglades National Park as examples of protected areas experiencing fire regime change between 1980 and 2017. Our open source visualizations may be applied to any data from the National Park Service Wildland Fire Events Geodatabase, with flexibility to communicate shifts in fire regimes over time, such as the type of ignition, duration and magnitude, and changes in seasonal occurrence. Application of the tool to Everglades and Big Cypress revealed that natural wildfires are occurring earlier in the wildfire season, while human-caused and prescribed wildfires are becoming less and more common, respectively. These new avenues of stakeholder communication are allowing the National Park Service to devise research plans to prepare for environmental change, guide resource allocation, and support decision-making in a clear and timely manner.

scholarly journals Effects of policy change on wildland fire management strategies: evidence for a paradigm shift in the western US?

2020 ◽  
Vol 29 (10) ◽  
pp. 857 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse D. Young ◽  
Alexander M. Evans ◽  
Jose M. Iniguez ◽  
Andrea Thode ◽  
Marc D. Meyer ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fire Management ◽  
Wildland Fire ◽  
Management Strategies ◽  
The United States ◽  
Management Policy ◽  
Fire Weather ◽  
Western Us ◽  
Strategic Options ◽  
In Fire ◽  
Wildland Fire Management

In 2009, new guidance for wildland fire management in the United States expanded the range of strategic options for managers working to reduce the threat of high-severity wildland fire, improve forest health and respond to a changing climate. Markedly, the new guidance provided greater flexibility to manage wildland fires to meet multiple resource objectives. We use Incident Status Summary reports to understand how wildland fire management strategies have differed across the western US in recent years and how management has changed since the 2009 Guidance for Implementation of Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. When controlling for confounding variation, we found the 2009 Policy Guidance along with other concurrent advances in fire management motivated an estimated 27 to 73% increase in the number of fires managed with expanded strategic options, with only limited evidence of an increase in size or annual area burned. Fire weather captured a manager’s intent and allocation of fire management resources relative to burning conditions, where a manager’s desire and ability to suppress is either complemented by fire weather, at odds with fire weather, or put aside due to other priorities. We highlight opportunities to expand the use of strategic options in fire-adapted forests to improve fuel heterogeneity.

Factors influencing large wildland fire suppression expenditures

2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 650 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jingjing Liang ◽  
Dave E. Calkin ◽  
Krista M. Gebert ◽  
Tyron J. Venn ◽  
Robin P. Silverstein
Keyword(s):  
Wildland Fire ◽  
Fire Suppression ◽  
Burned Area ◽  
Private Land ◽  
Fire Size ◽  
Department Of Agriculture ◽  
Factors Influencing ◽  
The Us ◽  
Large Fires ◽  
Parsimonious Model

There is an urgent and immediate need to address the excessive cost of large fires. Here, we studied large wildland fire suppression expenditures by the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service. Among 16 potential non-managerial factors, which represented fire size and shape, private properties, public land attributes, forest and fuel conditions, and geographic settings, we found only fire size and private land had a strong effect on suppression expenditures. When both were accounted for, all the other variables had no significant effect. A parsimonious model to predict suppression expenditures was suggested, in which fire size and private land explained 58% of variation in expenditures. Other things being equal, suppression expenditures monotonically increased with fire size. For the average fire size, expenditures first increased with the percentage of private land within burned area, but as the percentage exceeded 20%, expenditures slowly declined until they stabilised when private land reached 50% of burned area. The results suggested that efforts to contain federal suppression expenditures need to focus on the highly complex, politically sensitive topic of wildfires on private land.

Fire management on private conservation lands: knowledge, perceptions and actions of landholders in eastern Australia

2012 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucy G. Halliday ◽  
J. Guy Castley ◽  
James A. Fitzsimons ◽  
Cuong Tran ◽  
Jan Warnken
Keyword(s):  
Fire Management ◽  
Conservation Management ◽  
Natural Disturbance ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Vegetation Types ◽  
Management Planning ◽  
Management Actions ◽  
Eastern Australia ◽  
Established Role

Fire is an important natural disturbance process within the Australian landscape, but the complex and hazardous nature of fire creates a conservation management dilemma. For landholders of private conservation lands, management for conservation of biodiversity and risk reduction is complicated. Private conservation landholders in eastern Australia directed far less effort towards fire management than other conservation management actions, despite clearly acknowledging the risk and associated responsibilities of fire management on their lands. Nonetheless, landholders did undertake actions to reduce fuel hazards and prepare for wildfire events on their land. Despite the established role and benefits of fire to many ecosystems in the region, landholder understanding of the ecological role of fire was generally poor. Few landholders were aware of ecologically appropriate fire regimes for the vegetation types on their property, and few undertook fire management actions to achieve ecological outcomes. Site-specific obstacles, lack of fire management knowledge and experience, and legal and containment concerns contributed to the low level of fire management observed. There is a need for property-specific fire management planning across all private conservation lands, to further integrate ecological fire requirements into biodiversity management, and prioritise actions that aim to improve conservation outcomes while safeguarding life and property.

scholarly journals Multiproxy Holocene Fire Records From the Tropical Savannas of Northern Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Rehn ◽  
Cassandra Rowe ◽  
Sean Ulm ◽  
Patricia Gadd ◽  
Atun Zawadzki ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Fire Management ◽  
Fire Regimes ◽  
Fire Intensity ◽  
Methodological Innovation ◽  
Management Planning ◽  
Indigenous Management ◽  
Northern Cape ◽  
Cape York

Paleoecology has demonstrated potential to inform current and future land management by providing long-term baselines for fire regimes, over thousands of years covering past periods of lower/higher rainfall and temperatures. To extend this potential, more work is required for methodological innovation able to generate nuanced, relevant and clearly interpretable results. This paper presents records from Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia, as a case study where fire management is an important but socially complex modern management issue, and where palaeofire records are limited. Two new multiproxy palaeofire records are presented from Sanamere Lagoon (8,150–6,600 cal BP) and Big Willum Swamp (3,900 cal BP to present). These records combine existing methods to investigate fire occurrence, vegetation types, and relative fire intensity. Results presented here demonstrate a diversity of fire histories at different sites across Cape York Peninsula, highlighting the need for finer scale palaeofire research. Future fire management planning on Cape York Peninsula must take into account the thousands of years of active Indigenous management and this understanding can be further informed by paleoecological research.

Hardwood Log Grading in the United States—Part 1: A Historical Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (2) ◽  
pp. 110-123
Author(s):  
Curt C. Hassler ◽  
Shawn T. Grushecky ◽  
Lawrence E. Osborn ◽  
Joseph F. McNeel
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Forest Products ◽  
The United States ◽  
Forest Products Industry ◽  
Department Of Agriculture ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Grading Systems ◽  
The Us ◽  
Accepted Standard

Abstract The ability to efficiently and consistently characterize the quality of hardwood sawlogs is an indispensable part of operating a hardwood sawmill. And it is equally important for buyers and sellers of hardwood logs to negotiate prices on a uniform basis of both scale and grade. While scaling of logs is relatively straightforward, assuming buyer and seller agree on a specific log rule to use (e.g., Doyle, Scriber, International), grading logs for the purposes of evaluating quality is more complex. Hardwood log grading is an essential component of any hardwood sawmill's operation and effectively sets the stage for profit or loss. Various efforts have been made to develop a standardized log grading system by both the forest products industry and the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service (USDAFS) since the beginning of the 20th century. However, even after over a century of effort, there is still no broadly accepted standard for grading hardwood logs. The purpose of this article is to document the historical evolution of hardwood log grading systems. Understanding the development of hardwood log grading systems over time can help to produce a better log grading standard in the future.

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