Progress report for E. Kasischke

My activities this year focused on two areas: (a) studying the spatial/temporal aspects of fire occurrence in Alaska and North America based on analysis of fire statistics (both tabular and spatial databases); and (b) understanding factors that control fire severity. With respect to the first area, we continued analyses of fire data sets and summarized our results in two manuscripts – one of which is Chapter 17 in the Alaska Synthesis volume and a second which was submitted for publication in March and has subsequently been accepted and published (Kasischke et al. 2002). The second area of research involved continuing field work devoted towards developing a better understanding of the factors controlling burning of organic soils in Alaskan black spruce forests, including an intensive field sampling campaign during 2002 in conjunction with Jill Johnstone’s forest regrowth research. This work resulted in a manuscript that has been submitted for review to Canadian Journal of Forest Research (Kasischke et al., in review).

References

Kasischke, E.S., Williams, D., and Barry, D. 2002. Analysis of the patterns of large fires in the boreal forest region of Alaska. International Journal of Wildland Fire 11:131-144.

Kasischke, E.S., Johnstone, J., and Hewson, J. in review. Surface Fuel Consumption during a fire in a Picea marianna (Mill.) BSP Forest in Interior Alaska. Can J. For. Res.