Mean wildfire size has been increasing for the past several decades. Very large fires, those greater than 100,000 ha, occur often. These recent increases in the number and size of wildfires has accelerated fuel treatments in land management, particularly in the Wildland Urban Interface. When planning fuel treatments, considerations should also be given to two other perspectives related to biomass other than fuel loading: 1) biomass is important in ecosystems and provides many ecological services, and 2) the vegetation and fuel loading resulting from the treatments may not always reduce fire hazard. Ecological functions of biomass include: facilitating nutrient storage and cycling, influencing soil fertility, providing micro-site modification, protecting soil from erosion, sequestering carbon, and providing plant and animal habitat.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.