2015 Wildfire Season: An Overview, Southwestern U.S.

Southwestern ecosystems are fire-adapted and fire is arguably the most important process in our forests and grass lands. This overview is designed to help everyone from the general public to natural resource managers better understand the past fire season. This report describes the vegetation impacted by the 12 largest fires in Arizona and New Mexico of 2015 (greater than 4,000 acres) and the degree to which the fires affected resources including soils, vegetation, and structures. Weather, climate, vegetation type, fuel conditions, and topography all influence how an individual wildfire burns on the landscape and whether it will have beneficial effects on the landscape. Some fires will leave a large number of unburned patches creating a mosaic burn pattern, whereas others will burn more contiguously. Managers approach each fire with multiple objectives that range from managing the fire for public safety and to protect homes and property to managing the fire to improve natural resources. As federal wildland fire management policy states: “Response to wildland fires is based on ecological, social and legal consequences of the fire. The circumstances under which a fire occurs, and the likely consequences on firefighter and public safety and welfare, natural and cultural resources, and, values to be protected, dictate the appropriate response to the fire.”1 A full range of wildland fire response strategies may be employed to meet these objectives, including containing, confining or suppressing the wildfire. In a notable change, the national Incident Management Situation Report (IMSR) in 2015 began noting fires managed for full suppression in contrast to those using a strategy other than full suppression monitor, confine, or point protection. The Southwest Coordinating Committee recognized that multiple strategies are often used in an individual fire and lists the percentage of each fire managed with monitor, confine, point protection, or suppression.2 It is important to note that federal agencies only recognize two types of fires: prescribed fires and wildfire. Wildland fire management strategies are based on a thoughtful and systematic risk-based approach that takes into account firefighter and public safety, cause of the wildfire, location, existing land management plans, availability of resources, values at risk, and social factors. Federal policy dictates that “initial action on human-caused wildfire will be to suppress the fire.”1 This report follows the format of past years’ overviews3 to facilitate a comparison between years. As in previous overviews, this report covers the temporal period, fire management costs, vegetation types, previous burn footprints, and burn severity. The conclusion section summarizes these same measures for the large fires in the region and also touches on how these fires burned in relation to communities. In 2013, the eight largest fires burned 215,380 acres. In 2014, the 12 largest fires burned 177,907 acres. In 2015, the largest 12 fires burned 125,746, or 62 percent of the total number of acres burned by wildfire in the Southwest in 2015. Prescribed fires made up 37% of the acres burned, the highest percentage of acres burned in the Southwest since 2003. Based on the Southwest Coordination Center’s listing, managers used full suppression strategies on 11% and other strategies on 89% of the acres burned in fires over 100 acres in 2015.5 Eighty- six percent and 65% of fires over 100 acres were managed with full suppression strategies in 2013 and 2014, respectively. Most of the fires in the Southwest in 2015 burned in Arizona (79%). This overview only includes three New Mexico fires: the Red Canyon, North Cut and Guadalupe fires; eight fires burned in Arizona: Whitetail, Camillo, Springs, Sawmill, Playground, Rattlesnake, Jar Complex, and SA Hill; and the remaining fire, the Hog Fire, burned in both states. These 12 fires are listed in order of size starting with the largest

Spatial Particle Condensation for an Exclusion Process on a Ring

We study the stationary state of a simple exclusion process on a ring which was recently introduced by Arndt {\it et al} [J. Phys. A {\bf 31} (1998) L45;cond-mat/9809123]. This model exhibits spatial condensation of particles. It has been argued that the model has a phase transition from a ``mixed phase'' to a ``disordered phase''. However, in this paper exact calculations are presented which, we believe, show that in the framework of a grand canonical ensemble there is no such phase transition. An analysis of the fluctuations in the particle density strongly suggests that the same result also holds for the canonical ensemble.Comment: 20 pages, 4 figure

Electronic word of mouth in social media: The common characteristics of retweeted and favourited marketer-generated content posted on Twitter

Marketers desire to utilise electronic word of mouth (eWOM) marketing on social media sites. However, not all online content generated by marketers has the same effect on consumers; some of them are effective while others are not. This paper aims to examine different characteristics of marketer-generated content (MGC) that of which one lead users to eWOM. Twitter was chosen as one of the leading social media sites and a content analysis approach was employed to identify the common characteristics of retweeted and favourited tweets. 2,780 tweets from six companies (Booking, Hostelworld, Hotels, Lastminute, Laterooms and Priceline) operating in the tourism sector are analysed. Results indicate that the posts which contain pictures, hyperlinks, product or service information, direct answers to customers and brand centrality are more likely to be retweeted and favourited by users. The findings present the main eWOM drivers for MGC in social media.Abdulaziz Elwalda and Mohammed Alsagga