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Predictive maps of fuel break effectiveness by treatment type and underlying resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasion across the western U.S.

Metadata Updated: July 6, 2024

Escalated wildfire activity within the western U.S. has widespread societal impacts and long-term consequences for the imperiled sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) biome. Shifts from historical fire regimes and the interplay between frequent disturbance and invasive annual grasses may initiate permanent state transitions as wildfire frequency outpaces sagebrush communities’ innate capacity to recover. Therefore, wildfire management is at the core of conservation plans for sagebrush ecosystems, especially critical habitat for species of conservation concern such as the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus; hereafter sage-grouse). Fuel breaks help facilitate wildfire suppression by modifying behavior through fuels modification and allowing safe access points for containment by firefighters. We performed a retrospective assessment of probability of fuel break contributing to wildfire containment on all wildfire and fuel break interactions from 1985-2018 within the western U.S. We characterized environmental, fuels, and weather conditions within 500 m of wildfire contact, and within 5 km of the approaching wildfire. We used a binomial generalized mixed model framework with a binomial distribution to identify relationships between these variables and fuel break success. We used the probability of success as predicted from this model to generate maps of predicted probability of success of fuel breaks by resilience to disturbance and resistance to invasion classes for (a) brown strips, (b) mowed strips, (c) green strips, and (d) grand mean effects for all treatment types across the western U.S. These maps can be used to inform urgently needed fuel break placement, characteristics, and maintenance priorities across the sagebrush biome.

Access & Use Information

Public: This dataset is intended for public access and use. License: No license information was provided. If this work was prepared by an officer or employee of the United States government as part of that person's official duties it is considered a U.S. Government Work.

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Dates

Metadata Created Date May 31, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOI EDI

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date May 31, 2023
Metadata Updated Date July 6, 2024
Publisher U.S. Geological Survey
Maintainer
@Id http://datainventory.doi.gov/id/dataset/19eb81eb7c326e473816f55395bc2c62
Identifier USGS:645c0f20d34ec179a8382663
Data Last Modified 20230517
Category geospatial
Public Access Level public
Bureau Code 010:12
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://datainventory.doi.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id e2d7245c-9d3f-47da-942b-dddf833adbb8
Harvest Source Id 52bfcc16-6e15-478f-809a-b1bc76f1aeda
Harvest Source Title DOI EDI
Metadata Type geospatial
Old Spatial -122.0906,33.9202,-102.9161,51.4328
Publisher Hierarchy White House > U.S. Department of the Interior > U.S. Geological Survey
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash ffab62655ae0e8ab6a7cd2d558efa329d9cc223c557af4a2ea25541fea3e1f36
Source Schema Version 1.1
Spatial {"type": "Polygon", "coordinates": -122.0906, 33.9202, -122.0906, 51.4328, -102.9161, 51.4328, -102.9161, 33.9202, -122.0906, 33.9202}

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