Research

The purpose of this project, funded by CAL FIRE, is to develop improved post-fire tree mortality models that will account for direct (fire damage) and indirect (climate, competition) biophysical factors that govern fire-mediated tree mortality. These novel mortality models will enable managers to predict fire effects associated with prescribed and wildfire while controlling for variability due to different pre-fire climate and stand structure conditions. We will also develop functional group models that rely on fire-adaptive plant traits, rather than species identity, to predict post-fire mortality, allowing us to better describe mortality for rare and under-sampled species. We will also evaluate the temporal scale of delayed post-fire mortality across the state of CA, improving our estimates of large tree mortality and wildfire effects on carbon stocks. Key project outcomes include enhancements and additions to the Fire and Tree mortality database to improve representation of recent fires and endemic CA species, at least three peer-reviewed manuscripts, and an open-source R package that will make these state-of-the-science mortality models freely available.

Collaborators: Alina Cansler (UM), Sharon Hood (RMRS), and Phil van Mantgem (USGS)

We use process-based forest landscape models such as LANDIS-II in a variety of contexts to investigate how climate, land management, and ecological disturbance processes interactively affect landscape resilience and funcitoning. Outputs of these models can be coupled with distributed hydrology models (e.g., Furniss et al. 2025) and decision support tools (e.g., Furniss et al. 2023, 2024) to evalutate how management interventions (i.e., restoration, thinning, etc.) and wildfire management decisions can produce benefits including reducing future smoke, fire risk, providing sustainable biomass supplies, improving snowpack retention, and mitigating projected declines in late-season streamflows.  

Collaborators: Paul Hessburg (U. Washington) and Nick Povak (SIG)

PI Furniss is co-founder, along with Dr. Sara Germain, of the Wyoming Forest Resilience Initiative (WyFRI), a nascent program dedicated to supporting the health of WY forest resources through applied science, partnerships, and education. We bridge the gap between research and practice by providing stakeholders with the best available science and decision support to guide evidence-based management. Our team of forest health specialists, fire scientists, economists, and engineers provides the sound forest science to help managers balance timber production with forest health so that forests continue to provision billions of dollars in market revenues and ecosystem services. WyFRI helps fulfill UWyo’s land-grant mission by leading forest research and outreach, providing stakeholders with actionable information to benefit Wyoming communities.

Longitudinal Forest Monitoring: For over a decade I have been working with Dr. Jim Lutz at Utah State University on studying primary forest ecosystems of the western US through large, permanent forest demography plots. Our research program is focused in three permanent monitoring plots: Wind River Forest Dynamics Plot (27.2 ha) located in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, WA, the Yosemite Forest Dynamics Plot (25.6 ha) located in Yosemite National Park, CA, and the Utah Forest Dynamics Plot (13.6 ha) located in Cedar Breaks National Monument, UT. These are three of the largest permanent plots in western North America, and are part of the Smithsonian ForestGEO network of over 80 forest demography plots around the world. All live trees >= 1 cm at dbh (1.37 meters) are tagged, measured, and mapped (31,172 trees in the WFDP; 35,027 trees in the YFDP; 27,845 in the UFDP). We census the plots each year, tagging ingrowth trees and conducting detailed pathology exams on all mortalities. Through these forests we study forest community ecology, tree demography, theoretical ecology, climate effects, biotic and abiotic disturbance, and long-term forest change. See Bishop et al. 2019, Cansler et al. 2019, Furniss et al. 2017, Lutz et al. 2017, Larson et al. 2016, and Lutz et al. 2014 for recent collaborations within the WFI big plots, and see Lutz & Furniss et al. 2018 and LaManna et al. 2017 for global collaborations within the Smithsonian ForestGEO network.

Collaborators: Jim Lutz, Andrew Larson, Alina Cansler, Mark Swanson, Sara Germain, Dan Johnson

Joint Fire Science Program Graduate Research Innovation (GRIN) Award 19-1-01-10: Ongoing climatic changes are expected to drive increasing frequency and severity of drought, insects, and fire in Western forests. Taking advantage of California's historically unprecedented drought, I used existing long-term datasets containing annual mortality data for tens of thousands of trees in a factorial design to provide an assessment of the interacting effects of all three disturbance agents. Results will contribute to improved models of tree mortality, and will support management decisions related to fire and insect control during drought. This research will advance our understanding of ecological theory regarding disturbance interactions, and this will contribute to a more mechanistic understanding of tree mortality that is more adaptable to future climates and disturbance regimes.

Joint Fire Science Program award 16-1-04-02: The objective of this JFSP-funded research effort is to refine and advance the analytical tools used by fire ecologists and land managers in efforts to study, monitor, and manage fire-prone forest ecosystems. I am responsible for two deliverables of this grant: 1) improve fire mortality models by validating existing models with the largest spatially contiguous tree mortality dataset to date (Furniss et al. 2019), and by incorporating spatial parameters to account for heterogeneity in competitive pressure and drought stress (see Furniss et al. 2020), and 2) quantify the uncertainty contained within satellite-derived estimates fire severity (see Furniss et al. 2020 Remote Sensing of Environment).