The Fire Effects Information System: How a Superhero Database Comes to Save the Day

Land managers must make fi re management decisions considering place, history, and species, an undertaking that requires a vast amount of information that tends to be spread through many publications. The Fire Effects Information System ([FEIS] at www.fs.fed.us/database/feis) provides a single source for managers, where knowledge available in the scientifi c literature has been analyzed, discussed, and synthesized into reviews of plant and animal species. As managers formulate plans for prescribed fi res, fuel management, and post-fi re revegetation, they can see at a glance, without having to perform their own literature search, what the results of past research have been, where studies were located geographically, and where knowledge gaps exist. Available to managers since 1986, FEIS has recently been updated and expanded with reviews of 60 nonnative plant species. In these reviews, the scientists located extensive information on the basic ecology of weeds, but found little information on heat tolerance, post-fi re establishment, effects of varying fi re regimes (severities, seasons, and intervals between burns), or long-term effects of fi re