Background

In historically frequent fire forests, wildfires are burning larger areas and driving forest loss across western North America, yet they also produce extensive low- to moderate-severity effects that can be leveraged to harden landscapes against future high-severity fire.

Reducing fuel densities is the primary tool available to improve forest resilience to intensifying disturbance, but implementation is constrained by concern of effects to mature-forest associated species, such as spotted owls (Strix occidentalis).

The stability of seasonally dry Western mixed-conifer forests is threatened by the history of fire suppression, logging, and now increasing climate-driven aridity. Durable aboveground carbon storage in living trees–a key ecosystem service of these fire-adapted forests–is at risk due to the disruption of natural fire cycles.

Managers grappling with questions about dead wood in productive, often high-volume, westside Pacific Northwest forests seek to balance wildlife habitat quality and fire hazard reduction, especially following wildfires which can both consume and generate exceptional quantities of dead wood.

Elevated soil temperatures resulting from reintroduction of prescribed fire into long unburnt stands have been associated with unintended tree mortality. Several models exist to predict soil temperatures resulting from soil heating by fire; however, data to develop and validate these models are limited.

Background

Prevailing American wildland fire modelling systems fail to predict fire growth in urban areas due to the absence of burnable urban fuels.

Aims

This research aims to identify fuel models that optimise fire spread in urban areas relative to a hypothetical fire spread model derived from observations of recent urban fires.

As wildfires in the western United States grow in frequency and severity, forest fuels treatment has been increasingly recognized as essential for enhancing forest resilience and mitigating wildfire risks. However, the economic valuation of the treatment's co-benefits remains underexplored, limiting integration into financial and policy decision making.

Anticipating plausible future ecosystem states is necessary for effective ecosystem management. We use climate analog-based impact models and a co-production process with land managers to project future vegetation changes for the state of Oregon, United States, (2041–2070, RCP 8.5) at a management-relevant spatial resolution (270-m).