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An Integrated Study Investigating Masticated Fuels: Developing Sampling Methods, Describing Fire Behavior, and Evaluating Fire Effects
Mastication is a relatively new fuels treatment used to reduce the risk of wildfire in the Wildland Urban Interface. Mastication uses a variety of specially designed equipment that shred, flail, and crush canopy and surface fuels into smaller sizes with the goal of creating fuelbeds that, when burned, support slowly spreading fires that are easily controlled. Masticated fuel treatments are now in wide use across the western United States to meet hazardous fuel treatment acre targets and its continued use is likely. It is a somewhat expensive treatment but poses little risk to the fire manager when compared with prescribed burning.
While the mastication treatment reduces fuel depth, it can also result in a more continuous and compact surface fuel layer. This type of fuelbed is quite new to wildland fire science and, because mastication is a relatively new fuels treatment, it is unclear how these treatments will affect ecosystem function, surface fire behavior, or the resulting fire effects. Mastication may give immediate results in mitigating potential high intensity fire behavior and restoring historical stand structures, but there are also many unknowns about this treatment. First, very little is known of the characteristics and properties of masticated fuel beds. Second, there are no standardized methods to estimate fuel loading of the masticated fuelbeds and assessing changes in fuel loading is the first step towards quantifying fire behavior and effects. Next, very little is known about how these fuels burn under various moisture scenarios and weather conditions. This, in turn, has contributed to the lack of development of fire behavior fuel models that are appropriate for masticated fuelbeds. Last, the effects of the masticated fuelbed on ecosystem processes, such as nitrogen cycling, soil water availability, and vegetation dynamics are relatively unknown. If the masticated fuelbeds burn, the effects of fire in these stands are even a greater unknown. Managers need to be aware of the beneficial and adverse effects of mastication to more effectively manage ecosystems.
This study investigates the effects of masticated fuels on a variety of ecosystems using an integrated approach involving multiple disciplines and scientists. One phase of this study involves describing masticated fuel characteristics by measuring fuelbed properties that are important to the prediction of fire behavior and effects: 1) loading, 2) bulk density, 3) particle size distribution, and 4) mineral content. Another phase develops a fuel sampling protocol that can accurately, consistently, and comprehensively quantify masticated fuel loadings for a variety of management purposes including smoke emission prediction, fire behavior calculation, and soil heating description. Still another phase describes the behavior of fire burning in a masticated fuelbed and this information will be used to develop a set of fuel models to use to predict fire behavior in other masticated fuelbeds. And the last phase is a study the ecological effects of creating a masticated fuelbed. These effects are evaluated for burned and unburned masticated fuels and they include fuel consumption, soil heating, and nutrient cycling, and understory and overstory vegetation response (including nonnative invasive weeds). This study is designed so that more phases can be integrated as more scientists become interested and more types of masticated fuelbeds can be included as they are created by fire management.
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Rocky Mountain Research Station
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