Mountain Scholar
Mountain Scholar is an open access repository service that collects, preserves, and provides access to digitized library collections and other scholarly and creative works from Colorado State University and the University Press of Colorado. It also serves as a dark archive for the Open Textbook Library.
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- Explore the Colorado State University community’s scholarly output as well as items from the University at large and the CSU Libraries.
- A limited number of titles are available here. To see all OTL titles, please visit the Open Textbook Library at https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks. Only Open Textbook Library staff have access to all OTL Archive titles held in Mountain Scholar.
- Access is limited to University Press of Colorado members. Non-members: to purchase books, please visit https://upcolorado.com/.
Recent Submissions
A good TWIG: evaluating the treatment and wildfire interagency geodatabase viewer
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025-08) Franz, Scott, author; Courtney, Karissa, author; Rapp, Claire, author; Colavito, Melanie, author; Cheng, Tony, author; Heusinkveld, Dana, author; Withnall, Katie, author; Dappen, Patti, author; Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI), publisher
Forsythe II prescribed fire: unit 38C post-burn monitoring summary
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025-08) Schapira, Zoe, author; Morici, Kat, author; Colorado Forest Restoration Institute, publisher
Research priorities on post-wildfire forest restoration and recovery in the western United States
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2025) Jones, Kelly, author; Rodman, Kyle, author; Roberts, Michael, author; Chambers, Marin, author; vonHedemann, Nicolena, author; Stevens-Rumann, Camille, author; Cadol, Daniel, author; Morgan, Melinda, author; Southwest Ecological Restoration Institutes (SWERI), publisher
Extreme fire spread events and area burned under recent and future climate in the western USA
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022-03-19) Coop, Jonathan D., author; Parks, Sean A., author; Stevens-Rumann, Camille S., author; Ritter, Scott M., author; Hoffman, Chad M., author; John Wiley & Sons Ltd, publisher
Aim: Wildfire activity in recent years is notable not only for an expansion of total area burned but also for large, single-day fire spread events that pose challenges to ecological systems and human communities. Our objectives were to gain new insight into the relationships between extreme single-day fire spread events, annual area burned, and fire season climate and to predict changes under future warming. Location: Fire-prone regions of the western USA. Time period: 2002 2020; a future +2°C scenario. Methods: We used a satellite-derived dataset of daily fire spread events and gridded climate data to assess relationships between extreme single-day fire spread events, annual area burned, and fire season maximum temperature, climate moisture deficit, and vapour pressure deficit. We then developed models to predict fire activity under a 2°C warming scenario. Results: Extreme single-day fire spread events >1,100 ha (the top 16%, >1 SD) accounted for 70% of the cumulative area burned over the period of analysis. The variation in annual area burned was closely tied to the number and mean size of spread events and distributional skewness towards more large events. For example, we identified 441 extreme events in 2020 that together burned 2.2 million ha across our study area, in contrast to an average of 168 per year that burned 0.5 million ha annually between 2002 and 2019. Fire season climate variables were correlated with the annual number of extreme events and area burned. Our models predicted that the annual number of extreme fire spread events more than double under a 2°C warming scenario, with an attendant doubling in the area burned. Conclusions: Exceptional fire seasons like 2020 will become more likely, and wildfire activity under future extremes is predicted to exceed anything yet witnessed. Safeguarding human communities and supporting resilient ecosystems will require new lines of scientific inquiry, new land management approaches and accelerated climate mitigation efforts.
Biogeographic patterns of daily wildfire spread and extremes across North America
(Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024-05-27) Balik, Jared A., author; Coop, Jonathan D., author; Krawchuk, Meg A., author; Naficy, Cameron E., author; Parisien, Marc-André, author; Parks, Sean A., author; Stevens-Rumann, Camille S., author; Whitman, Ellen, author; Frontiers, publisher
Introduction: Climate change is predicted to increase the frequency of extreme single-day fire spread events, with major ecological and social implications. In contrast with well-documented spatio-temporal patterns of wildfire ignitions and perimeters, daily progression remains poorly understood across continental spatial scales, particularly for extreme single-day events ("blow ups"). Here, we characterize daily wildfire spread across North America, including occurrence of extreme single-day events, duration and seasonality of fire and extremes, and ecoregional climatic niches of fire in terms of Actual Evapotranspiration (AET) and Climatic Water Deficit (CWD) annual climate normals. Methods: Remotely sensed daily progression of 9,636 wildfires ≥400 ha was used to characterize ecoregional patterns of fire growth, extreme single-day events, duration, and seasonality. To explore occurrence, extent, and impacts of single-day extremes among ecoregions, we considered complementary ecoregional and continental extreme thresholds (Ecoregional or Continental Mean Daily Area Burned + 2SD). Ecoregional spread rates were regressed against AET and CWD to explore climatic influence on spread. Results: We found three-fold differences in mean Daily Area Burned among 10 North American ecoregions, ranging from 260 ha day–1 in the Marine West Coast Forests to 751 ha day–1 in Mediterranean California. Ecoregional extreme thresholds ranged from 3,829 ha day–1 to 16,626 ha day–1, relative to a continental threshold of 7,173 ha day–1. The ~3% of events classified as extreme cumulatively account for 16–55% of total area burned among ecoregions. We observed four-fold differences in mean fire duration, ranging from 2.7 days in the Great Plains to 10.5 days in Northwestern Forested Mountains. Regions with shorter fire durations also had greater daily area burned, suggesting a paradigm of fast-growing short-duration fires in some regions and slow-growing long-duration fires elsewhere. CWD had a weak positive relationship with spread rate and extreme thresholds, and there was no pattern for AET. Discussion: Regions with shorter fire durations had greater daily area burned, suggesting a paradigm of fast-growing short-duration fires in some regions and slow-growing long-duration fires elsewhere. Although climatic conditions can set the stage for ignition and influence vegetation and fuels, finer-scale mechanisms likely drive variation in daily spread. Daily fire progression offers valuable insights into the regional and seasonal distributions of extreme single-day spread events, and how these events shape net fire effects.