Brandon Collins

Brandon Collins is a Research Scientist with both the US Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, and the Center for Fire Research and Outreach. His research interests involve characterizing effects of fire and fuels treatments on forests.Much of Brandon’s research is intended to be applied to inform forest management aimed at improving resiliency and incorporating more natural fire-vegetation dynamics across landscapes.

His active research areas include:

stand development/recovery following fuel reduction treatments and wildfires
modeled effects of landscape fuel treatment networks
fire severity patterns and interactions among managed wildfires in long-term natural fire areas, and
characterizing variability in forests under more natural fire regimes.

View Brandon's Curriculum Vitae

A list of publications by Brandon Collins during his time at the Center* can be found below:

Title	Author	Journal	Year
Forest fuel treatment detection using multi-temporal airborne lidar data and high resolution aerial imagery: A case study in the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California	Su, Y., Q. Guo, B. M. Collins, D. L. Fry, T. Hu, and M. Kelly	International Journal of Remote Sensing	in press
Post-fire vegetation and fuel development influences fire severity patterns in reburns	Coppoletta, M., K. E. Merriam, and B. M. Collins	Ecological Applications	2016
A vegetation mapping strategy for conifer forests by combining airborne lidar data and aerial imagery	Su, Y., Q. Guo, D. L. Fry, B. M Collins, M. Kelly, J. P. Flanagan, and J. J. Battles	Canadian Journal of Remote Sensing	2016
Tamm Review: Management of mixed-severity fire regime forests in Oregon, Washington, and Northern California	Hessburg, P. F., T. A. Spies, D. A. Perry, C. N. Skinner, A. H. Taylor, P. M. Brown, S. L. Stephens, A. J. Larson, D. J. Churchill, N. A. Povak, P. H. Singleton, B. McComb, W. J. Zielinski, B. M. Collins, R. B. Salter, J. J. Keane, J. F. Franklin, and G. Riegel	Forest Ecology and Management	2016
Incorporating resource protection constraints in an analysis of landscape fuel treatment effectiveness in the northern Sierra Nevada	Dow, C.B., B. M. Collins, and S. L. Stephens	Environmental Management	2016
Management impacts on carbon dynamics in a Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forest	Dore, S., D. L. Fry, B. M. Collins, R. Vargas, R. A. York, and S. L. Stephens	PLoS One	2016
Differences in land ownership, fire management objectives, and source data matter: a reply to Hanson and Odion (2014)	Safford, H. D., J. D. Miller, and B. M. Collins.	International Journal of Wildland Fire	2015
Aboveground live carbon stock changes of California wildland ecosystems, 2001-2010	Gonzalez, P., J. J. Battles, B. M. Collins, T. Robards, and D. S. Saah	Forest Ecology and Management	2015
Relating fuel loads to overstorey structure and composition in a fire-excluded Sierra Nevada mixed conifer forest	Lydersen, J. M., B. M. Collins, E. E. Knapp, G. B. Roller, and S. L. Stephens	International Journal of Wildland Fire	2015
Historical and current landscape-scale ponderosa pine and mixed conifer forest structure in the Southern Sierra Nevada	Stephens, S. L., J. M. Lydersen, B. M. Collins, D. L. Fry, and M. D. Meyer	Ecosphere	2015
Large wildfires in forests: what can be done?	Stephens, S. L., M. P. North, and B. M. Collins	American Institute of Biological Sciences, Action Bioscience	2015
Novel characterization of landscape-level variability in historical vegetation structure	Collins, B. M., J. M. Lydersen, R. G. Everett, D. L. Fry, and S. L. Stephens	Ecological Applications	2015
Evaluating short- and long-term impacts of fuels treatments and simulated wildfire on an old-forest species	Tempel, D. J., R. J. Gutierrez, J. J. Battles, D. L. Fry, Y. Su, Q. Guo, M. J. Reetz, S. A. Whitmore, G. M. Jones, B. M. Collins, S. L. Stephens, M. Kelly, W. J. Berigan, and M. Z. Peery	Ecosphere	2015
Reform forest management to work with fire	North, M. P., S. L. Stephens, B. M. Collins, J. K. Agee, G. Aplet, J. F. Franklin, and P. Z. Fule	Science	2015
Constraints on mechanized treatment significantly limit mechanical fuels reduction extent in the Sierra Nevada	North, M., A. Brough, J. W. Long, B. M. Collins, P. Bowden, D. A. Yasuda, J. D. Miller, and N. G. Sugihara	Journal of Forestry	2015
Fire weather and large fire potential in the northern Sierra Nevada	Collins, B. M.	Agricultural and Forest Meteorology	2014
Contrasting spatial patterns in active-fire and fire-suppressed Mediterranean climate old-growth mixed conifer forests	Fry, D. L., S. L. Stephens, B. M. Collins, M. P. North, E. Franco-Vizcaíno, and S. J. Gill.	PLoS One	2014
Chapter 30: Montane forests	North, M., B. M. Collins, and H. D. Safford	Ecosystems of California (in press), H. Mooney and E. Zavaleta, editors	2014
Chapter 4.1: Fire and fuels in J. Long, C. Skinner, and L. Quinn-Davidson, editors.	Collins, B. M., and C. Skinner.	Science synthesis to promote resilience of social-ecological systems in the Sierra Nevada and southern Cascades. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station	2014
Using field data to assess model predictions of surface and ground fuel consumption by wildfire in coniferous forests of California	Lydersen, J. M., B. M. Collins, C. Ewell, A. L. Reiner, J. A.Fites, C. B. Dow, P. Gonzalez, D. S. Saah, and J. J. Battles	Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences	2014
Severity of an uncharacteristically large wildfire, the Rim Fire, in forests with relatively restored frequent fire regimes	Lydersen, J. M., M. P. North, and B. M. Collins.	Forest Ecology and Management	2014
Quantifying ladder fuels: a new approach using LiDAR	Kramer, H. A., B. M. Collins, S. L. Stephens, and M. Kelly	Forests	2014
California spotted owl, songbird, and small mammal responses to landscape-scale fuel treatments	Stephens, S. L., S. W. Bigelow, R. D. Burnett, B. M. Collins, C. V. Gallagher, J. Keane, D. A. Kelt, M. P. North, L. J. Roberts, P. A. Stine, and D. H. Van Vuren	Bioscience	2014
Beyond reducing fire hazard: fuel treatment impacts on overstory tree survival	Collins, B. M., A. J. Das, J. J. Battles, D. L. Fry, K. D. Krasnow, and S. L. Stephens	Ecological Applications	2014

* Sep 16, 2013 – present