Introduction to Fire in California: Second Edition (California Natural History Guides)

This textbook provides students and academics with a conceptual understanding of fire behavior and fire effects on people and ecosystems to support effective integrated fire management. Through case studies, interactive spreadsheets programmed with equations and graphics, and clear explanations, the book provides undergraduate, graduate, and professional readers with a straightforward learning path. The authors draw from years of experience in successfully teaching fundamental concepts and applications, synthesizing cutting-edge science, and applying lessons learned from fire practitioners. We discuss fire as part of environmental and human health. Our process-based, comprehensive, and quantitative approach encompasses combustion and heat transfer, and fire effects on people, plants, soils, and animals in forest, grassland, and woodland ecosystems from around the Earth. Case studies and examples link fundamental concepts to local, landscape, and global fire implications, including social-ecological systems. Globally, fire science and integrated fire management have made major strides in the last few decades. Society faces numerous fire-related challenges, including the increasing occurrence of large fires that threaten people and property, smoke that poses a health hazard, and lengthening fire seasons worldwide. Fires are useful to suppress fires, conserve wildlife and habitat, enhance livestock grazing, manage fuels, and in ecological restoration. Understanding fire science is critical to forecasting the implication of global change for fires and their effects. Increasing the positive effects of fire (fuels reduction, enhanced habitat for many plants and animals, ecosystem services increased) while reducing the negative impacts of fires (loss of human lives, smoke and carbon emissions that threaten health, etc.) is part of making fires good servants rather than bad masters.

Natural disasters devastate communities. They reshape the landscape and can drastically change people's lives for years after the event. Learn all about wildfires and freak weather. Find out how they form and where they are most likely to occur. Case studies and diagrams throughout reveal what scientists know about these phenomena and how they study them. Explore how natural disasters work by cracking them open and looking at them from the inside. How do they happen? How are they destructive? What happens on the inside of each phenomena? And where in the world are the danger zones? This series explore each of these questions in detail. This series uses detailed artwork, cutaways and images from real-life to give a rounded view of each event. Perfect for readers aged 9 +.