Catalogue Search | MBRL
Are you sure you want to remove the book from the shelf?
{{itemTitle}}
4,407,883
result(s) for
"fire"
Sort by:
Fire : a very short introduction
\"Fire: A Very Short Introduction considers fire's four-hundred-million-year history, its chemical composition, its role in human development, and its different meanings, from heat and comfort to death and destruction. Fires in buildings regularly make the headlines, and news of wildfires now reaches our computer and smartphone screens. Urban and pastoral attitudes to fire can differ and formulating fire suppression policies can be complex. Two things have fundamentally altered our understanding; increased knowledge about fire in the deep time before human evolution, and the growth of satellite technology, which has transformed how we observe fire. In the context of our changing climate, an improved understanding of fire worldwide is urgently needed\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Adapting western North American forests to climate change and wildfires
We review science-based adaptation strategies for western North American (wNA) forests that include restoring active fire regimes and fostering resilient structure and composition of forested landscapes. As part of the review, we address common questions associated with climate adaptation and realignment treatments that run counter to a broad consensus in the literature. These include the following: (1) Are the effects of fire exclusion overstated? If so, are treatments unwarranted and even counterproductive? (2) Is forest thinning alone sufficient to mitigate wildfire hazard? (3) Can forest thinning and prescribed burning solve the problem? (4) Should active forest management, including forest thinning, be concentrated in the wildland urban interface (WUI)? (5) Can wildfires on their own do the work of fuel treatments? (6) Is the primary objective of fuel reduction treatments to assist in future firefighting response and containment? (7) Do fuel treatments work under extreme fire weather? (8) Is the scale of the problem too great? Can we ever catch up? (9) Will planting more trees mitigate climate change in wNA forests? And (10) is post-fire management needed or even ecologically justified? Based on our review of the scientific evidence, a range of proactive management actions are justified and necessary to keep pace with changing climatic and wildfire regimes and declining forest heterogeneity after severe wildfires. Science-based adaptation options include the use of managed wildfire, prescribed burning, and coupled mechanical thinning and prescribed burning as is consistent with land management allocations and forest conditions. Although some current models of fire management in wNA are averse to short-term risks and uncertainties, the long-term environmental, social, and cultural consequences of wildfire management primarily grounded in fire suppression are well documented, highlighting an urgency to invest in intentional forest management and restoration of active fire regimes.
Journal Article
Between Two Fires
From a fire policy of prevention at all costs to today's restored
burning, Between Two Fires is America's history channeled
through the story of wildland fire management. Stephen J. Pyne
tells of a fire revolution that began in the 1960s as a reaction to
simple suppression and single-agency hegemony, and then matured
into more enlightened programs of fire management. It describes the
counterrevolution of the 1980s that stalled the movement, the
revival of reform after 1994, and the fire scene that has evolved
since then. Pyne is uniquely qualified to tell America's fire
story. The author of more than a score of books, he has told fire's
history in the United States, Australia, Canada, Europe, and the
Earth overall. In his earlier life, he spent fifteen seasons with
the North Rim Longshots at Grand Canyon National Park. In
Between Two Fires , Pyne recounts how, after the Great
Fires of 1910, a policy of fire suppression spread from America's
founding corps of foresters into a national policy that manifested
itself as a costly all-out war on fire. After fifty years of
attempted fire suppression, a revolution in thinking led to a more
pluralistic strategy for fire's restoration. The revolution
succeeded in displacing suppression as a sole strategy, but it has
failed to fully integrate fire and land management and has fallen
short of its goals. Today, the nation's backcountry and
increasingly its exurban fringe are threatened by larger and more
damaging burns, fire agencies are scrambling for funds,
firefighters continue to die, and the country seems unable to come
to grips with the fundamentals behind a rising tide of megafires.
Pyne has once again constructed a history of record that will shape
our next century of fire management. Between Two Fires is
a story of ideas, institutions, and fires. It's America's story
told through the nation's flames.
eBook
The human dimension of fire regimes on Earth
Humans and their ancestors are unique in being a fire-making species, but 'natural' (i.e. independent of humans) fires have an ancient, geological history on Earth. Natural fires have influenced biological evolution and global biogeochemical cycles, making fire integral to the functioning of some biomes. Globally, debate rages about the impact on ecosystems of prehistoric human-set fires, with views ranging from catastrophic to negligible. Understanding of the diversity of human fire regimes on Earth in the past, present and future remains rudimentary. It remains uncertain how humans have caused a departure from ' natural' background levels that vary with climate change. Available evidence shows that modern humans can increase or decrease background levels of natural fire activity by clearing forests, promoting grazing, dispersing plants, altering ignition patterns and actively suppressing fires, thereby causing substantial ecosystem changes and loss of biodiversity. Some of these contemporary fire regimes cause substantial economic disruptions owing to the destruction of infrastructure, degradation of ecosystem services, loss of life, and smoke-related health effects. These episodic disasters help frame negative public attitudes towards landscape fires, despite the need for burning to sustain some ecosystems. Greenhouse gas-induced warming and changes in the hydrological cycle may increase the occurrence of large, severe fires, with potentially significant feedbacks to the Earth system. Improved understanding of human fire regimes demands: (1 ) better data on past and current human influences on fire regimes to enable global comparative analyses, (2) a greater understanding of different cultural traditions of landscape burning and their positive and negative social, economic and ecological effects, and (3) more realistic representations of anthropogenic fire in global vegetation and climate change models. We provide an historical framework to promote understanding of the development and diversification of fire regimes, covering the pre-human period, human domestication of fire, and the subsequent transition from subsistence agriculture to industrial economies. All of these phases still occur on Earth, providing opportunities for comparative research.
Journal Article
Evidence for widespread changes in the structure, composition, and fire regimes of western North American forests
Implementation of wildfire- and climate-adaptation strategies in seasonally dry forests of western North America is impeded by numerous constraints and uncertainties. After more than a century of resource and land use change, some question the need for proactive management, particularly given novel social, ecological, and climatic conditions. To address this question, we first provide a framework for assessing changes in landscape conditions and fire regimes. Using this framework, we then evaluate evidence of change in contemporary conditions relative to those maintained by active fire regimes, i.e., those uninterrupted by a century or more of human-induced fire exclusion. The cumulative results of more than a century of research document a persistent and substantial fire deficit and widespread alterations to ecological structures and functions. These changes are not necessarily apparent at all spatial scales or in all dimensions of fire regimes and forest and nonforest conditions. Nonetheless, loss of the once abundant influence of low- and moderate-severity fires suggests that even the least fire-prone ecosystems may be affected by alteration of the surrounding landscape and, consequently, ecosystem functions. Vegetation spatial patterns in fire-excluded forested landscapes no longer reflect the heterogeneity maintained by interacting fires of active fire regimes. Live and dead vegetation (surface and canopy fuels) is generally more abundant and continuous than before European colonization. As a result, current conditions are more vulnerable to the direct and indirect effects of seasonal and episodic increases in drought and fire, especially under a rapidly warming climate. Long-term fire exclusion and contemporaneous social-ecological influences continue to extensively modify seasonally dry forested landscapes. Management that realigns or adapts fire-excluded conditions to seasonal and episodic increases in drought and fire can moderate ecosystem transitions as forests and human communities adapt to changing climatic and disturbance regimes. As adaptation strategies are developed, evaluated, and implemented, objective scientific evaluation of ongoing research and monitoring can aid differentiation of warranted and unwarranted uncertainties.
Journal Article
Fire engines
Describes the parts of a fire engine and how fire fighters use them to fight fires.
Book
How risk management can prevent future wildfire disasters in the wildland-urban interface
Recent fire seasons in the western United States are some of the most damaging and costly on record. Wildfires in the wildland-urban interface on the Colorado Front Range, resulting in thousands of homes burned and civilian fatalities, although devastating, are not without historical reference. These fires are consistent with the characteristics of large, damaging, interface fires that threaten communities across much of the western United States. Wildfires are inevitable, but the destruction of homes, ecosystems, and lives is not. We propose the principles of risk analysis to provide land management agencies, first responders, and affected communities who face the inevitability of wildfires the ability to reduce the potential for loss. Overcoming perceptions of wildland-urban interface fire disasters as a wildfire control problem rather than a home ignition problem, determined by home ignition conditions, will reduce home loss.
Journal Article