When the Forests Are Ablaze

A burning mix of diesel fuel and gasoline drips from handheld canisters onto the ground. Slowly a line of fire begins to creep downhill. The flames are well behaved, almost hesitant. This is a backing fire, unlikely to attract media attention unless it escapes, like the disastrous Los Alamos Cerro Grande fire did in 2000. This book explores a century of controversy over prescribed burning―using fire as a tool―and fire suppression. For more than 100 years, America waged an all-out war against wildland fire. Decades of fire suppression caused fuels to build up at alarming levels in our forests, culminating in the increasingly severe, uncontrollable fires of the late 20th century―the fires in Yellowstone, the Oakland Hills, and Los Alamos and the fires in summers of 2000 (the second worst fire season in the nation's history) and 2001.   Looking at these and earlier fires, Carle uses the voices of those who were involved, of those who were early advocates, and of today's proponents to examine the role of controlled burning. Early in the century, Harold Biswell, a pioneer in prescribed burning, dared to commit the heresy of questioning the dogma of fire suppression, despite professional controversy and opprobrium, he and a few other pioneers led the way. Their roles play an integral part in the story told here. In Biswell's words, fire is a natural part of the environment, about as important as rain and sunshine… . We must work more in harmony with nature, not so much against it. Can humanity, this book asks, learn to become a fire-adapted species?

"Modelling, Monitoring and Management of Forest Fires III" includes selected papers presented at the Third International Conference on Modelling, Monitoring and Management of Forest Fires, held in May 2012. The Conference is the third in a series of biennial conferences organized by the Wessex Institute of Technology on the application of computer techniques to the difficult field of forest fire prevention, management, and mitigation. The latest conference was sponsored by the International Journal of Sustainable Development and Planning and the International Journal of Safety and Security Engineering. Forest Fires are very complex phenomena which, under the right physical conditions, can rapidly devastate large areas. Approaches to controlling fires strongly depend on the physical characteristics of the surrounding region, so that those suitable for rural areas differ from those applicable in urban environments. Fire control approaches also vary depending on weather conditions, regional activities, and forest type, as well as social and economic factors. At present insufficient knowledge of the behavior of fires and how they propagate makes these phenomena very difficult to control and is one of the most important obstacles to the development of a reliable decision support system. Public concern regarding this topic is increasing as uncontrolled fires may lead to major ecological disasters, and usually result in negative economic and health implications for an entire region. Forest fire analysis and mitigation requires the development of computer codes that can take into consideration a large number of different parameters. Papers in this book discuss the latest research and applications of available tools to analyze and predict the spread of forest fires both to prevent or reduce major loss of life and property and to avoid damage to the environment.

Nonindigenous plants and plant pests that find their way to the United States and become invasive can often cause problems. They cost more than $100 billion per year in crop and timber losses plus the expense of herbicides and pesticides. And this figure does not include the costs of invasions in less intensively managed ecosystems such as wetlands. Nonindigenous Plants and Plant Pests examines this growing problem and offers recommendations for enhancing the science base in this field, improving our detection of potential invaders, and refining our ability to predict their impact. The book analyzes the factors that shape an invader's progress through four stages: arriving through one of many possible ports of entry, reaching a threshold of survival, thriving through proliferation and geographic spread, and ultimate impact on the organism's new environment. The book also reviews approaches to predicting whether a species will become an invader as well as the more complex challenge of predicting and measuring its impact on the environment, a process involving value judgments and risk assessment. This detailed analysis will be of interest to policymakers, plant scientists, agricultural producers, environmentalists, and public agencies concerned with invasive plant and plant pest species.