Dec 12 2012

Webinar Dec 20th- What is Live Fuel Moisture? A New Look at the Combustion of Live Plants

Image from Jennifer Barnes, National Park Service

Date: Thursday, December 20, 2012
Time: 10:00 – 11:30 AM (AK Time)

Link to recording <HERE>

Presented by: Matt Jolly, PhD
Research Ecologist, USFS
Fire, Fuel and Smoke Science Program
Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory

Live fuel moisture is measured frequently throughout the country as an indicator of potential fire behavior but little is known about the primary factors that drive their seasonal variations. Dr. Matt Jolly will delve into the interactive factors that control live fuel moisture and will discuss some of the potential implications of these factors on seasonal variations in the fire potential of living plants. Ultimately, he will show how the interactions between the water content of the foliage and seasonal changes in the leaf’s dry weight combine to influence calculated live fuel moisture and its flammability.

Read more about Dr. Jolly’s work with living plants and fire and the Missoula Fire Sciences Lab.

Assessing the effect of foliar moisture on the spread rate of crown fires
Martin E. Alexander and Miguel G. Cruz, 2012

Join The Webinarr:

Click HERE to join this webinar (http://osu-pilot-conc.adobeconnect.com/dec202012/).

No pre-registration required. This link will be active at 9:45 am AK Time on Dec 20th. Select “Enter as a Guest” and provide your name where prompted to participate.

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Apr 30 2012

Tundra burning in Alaska: Rare events or harbinger of climate change? Join the Webinar!

The 2007 Uluksian Fire (photo courtesy of P. Higuera).

Dr. Philip Higuera (assistant professor at the College of Natural Resources, University of Idaho) will be joining us for a webinar on May 24, 2012 (1:00-2:00 pm AKDT) entitled “Tundra burning in Alaska: Rare event of harbinger of climate change?”. Philip’s current research is focused on how climate, vegetation, and human activities interact with fire occurrence and fire regimes (from across years to across millenia). He is also the Director of the Paleoecology and Fire Ecology Lab where students and researchers work on charcoal and pollen analysis in lake-sediment records, dendrochronology, and spatially-explicit modeling and analyses for areas in the US Rocky Mountains, Alaska, and abroad in Tasmania, Australia.

Link to recording <HERE>

Webinar at a Glance:

Dr. Philip Higuera will be presenting results from past and ongoing research focused on understanding the causes and consequences of tundra burning in the past, present, and future. The talk will integrate several lines of work, including reconstructing tundra fire history in the recent and distant past (2000-14,000 yr), quantifying relationships among modern climate, vegetation, and tundra burning, and anticipating future tundra burning given future climate scenarios.

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Feb 28 2012

Once Burned, Twice Shy: Webinar Wrap Up

Here’s a big Thank You to everyone who attended last week’s webinar “Once burned, twice shy”, presented on Feb. 23rd. For those who could not attend or who have been eagerly awaiting the follow up materials, please feel free to explore the videos, documents and links below. (For more information, see our previous post on this webinar.)

In Summary

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(Slides by Dr. Carissa Brown.)

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Feb 9 2012

Once burned, twice shy: Repeat fires result in black spruce regeneration failure (Webinar)

A re-burned fire with little to no black spruce regeneration, 2007. Photo courtesy of C. Brown.

Dr. Carissa Brown, Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Sherbrooke, will be joining us for a webinar on February 23, 2012 (11:00 am to noon AKST) entitled “Once burned, twice shy: Repeat fires result in black spruce regeneration failure.” Dr. Brown is currently studying plant species and communities at the edge of their range, focusing on the direct and indirect effects of climate change on species distribution at northern latitudes. Most recently, her work has focused on the responses to altered fire frequency at the northern margin of the boreal forest, particularly in black spruce forests.

Link to recording <HERE>

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