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The impact of antecedent fire area on burned area in southern California coastal ecosystems

Overview of attention for article published in Journal of Environmental Management, October 2012
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  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (72nd percentile)
  • Above-average Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (61st percentile)

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1 policy source
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2 X users

Citations

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42 Dimensions

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109 Mendeley
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Title
The impact of antecedent fire area on burned area in southern California coastal ecosystems
Published in
Journal of Environmental Management, October 2012
DOI 10.1016/j.jenvman.2012.08.042
Pubmed ID
Authors

Owen F. Price, Ross A. Bradstock, Jon E. Keeley, Alexandra D. Syphard

Abstract

Frequent wildfire disasters in southern California highlight the need for risk reduction strategies for the region, of which fuel reduction via prescribed burning is one option. However, there is no consensus about the effectiveness of prescribed fire in reducing the area of wildfire. Here, we use 29 years of historical fire mapping to quantify the relationship between annual wildfire area and antecedent fire area in predominantly shrub and grassland fuels in seven southern California counties, controlling for annual variation in weather patterns. This method has been used elsewhere to measure leverage: the reduction in wildfire area resulting from one unit of prescribed fire treatment. We found little evidence for a leverage effect (leverage = zero). Specifically our results showed no evidence that wildfire area was negatively influenced by previous fires, and only weak relationships with weather variables rainfall and Santa Ana wind occurrences, which were variables included to control for inter-annual variation. We conclude that this is because only 2% of the vegetation burns each year and so wildfires rarely encounter burned patches and chaparral shrublands can carry a fire within 1 or 2 years after previous fire. Prescribed burning is unlikely to have much influence on fire regimes in this area, though targeted treatment at the urban interface may be effective at providing defensible space for protecting assets. These results fit an emerging global model of fire leverage which position California at the bottom end of a continuum, with tropical savannas at the top (leverage = 1: direct replacement of wildfire by prescribed fire) and Australian eucalypt forests in the middle (leverage ~ 0.25).

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 109 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Brazil 2 2%
Portugal 1 <1%
South Africa 1 <1%
Israel 1 <1%
Spain 1 <1%
Unknown 103 94%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Researcher 35 32%
Student > Ph. D. Student 11 10%
Student > Master 11 10%
Other 10 9%
Student > Doctoral Student 6 6%
Other 14 13%
Unknown 22 20%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Environmental Science 31 28%
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 23 21%
Earth and Planetary Sciences 10 9%
Medicine and Dentistry 4 4%
Engineering 2 2%
Other 7 6%
Unknown 32 29%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 5. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 10 April 2015.
All research outputs
#7,148,499
of 25,374,647 outputs
Outputs from Journal of Environmental Management
#1,685
of 6,438 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#53,026
of 192,622 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Journal of Environmental Management
#16
of 42 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,374,647 research outputs across all sources so far. This one has received more attention than most of these and is in the 71st percentile.
So far Altmetric has tracked 6,438 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.5. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 73% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 192,622 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 72% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 42 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 61% of its contemporaries.