Research Database
Displaying 61 - 77 of 77
The cost of climate change: Ecosystem services and wildland fires
Year: 2015
Little research has focused on the economic impact associated with climate-change induced wildland fire on natural ecosystems and the goods and services they provide. We examine changes in wildland fire patterns based on the U.S. Forest Service's MC1 dynamic global vegetation model from 2013 to 2115 under two pre-defined scenarios: a reference (i.e., business-as-usual) and a greenhouse gas mitigation policy scenario. We construct a habitat equivalency model under which fuels management activities, actions commonly undertaken to reduce the frequency and/or severity of wildland fire, are used…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Categorizing the social context of the wildland urban interface: Adaptive capacity for wildfire and community "archetypes"
Year: 2015
Understanding the local context that shapes collective response to wildfire risk continues to be a challenge for scientists and policymakers. This study utilizes and expands on a conceptual approach for understanding adaptive capacity to wildfire in a comparison of 18 past case studies. The intent is to determine whether comparison of local social context and community characteristics across cases can identify community "archetypes" that approach wildfire planning and mitigation in consistently different ways. Identification of community archetypes serves as a potential strategy for…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The economic benefit of localised, short-term, wildfire-potential information
Year: 2015
Wildfire-potential information products are designed to support decisions for prefire staging of movable wildfire suppression resources across geographic locations. We quantify the economic value of these information products by defining their value as the difference between two cases of expected fire-suppression expenditures: one in which daily information about spatial variation in wildfire-potential is used to move fire suppression resources throughout the season, and the other case in which daily information is not used and fire-suppression resources are staged in their home locations all…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Regional projections of the likelihood of very large wildland fires under a changing climate in the contiguous Western United States
Year: 2014
Seasonal changes in the climatic potential for very large wildfires (VLWF ≥ 50,000 ac ~ 20,234 ha) across the western contiguous United States are projected over the 21st century using generalized linear models and downscaled climate projections for two representative concentration pathways (RCPs). Significant (p ≤ 0.05) increases in VLWF probability for climate of the mid-21st century (2031–2060) relative to contemporary climate are found, for both RCP 4.5 and 8.5. The largest differences are in the Eastern Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Pacific Northwest, Rocky Mountains, and Southwest.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Climate and very large wildland fires in the contiguous western USA
Year: 2014
Very large wildfires can cause significant economic and environmental damage, including destruction of homes, adverse air quality, firefighting costs and even loss of life. We examine how climate is associated with very large wildland fires (VLWFs ≥50 000 acres, or ~20 234 ha) in the western contiguous USA. We used composite records of climate and fire to investigate the spatial and temporal variability of VLWF–climatic relationships. Results showed quantifiable fire weather leading up and up to 3 weeks post VLWF discovery, thus providing predictors of the probability that VLWF occurrence in…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland firefighter safety zones: a review of past science and summary of future needs
Year: 2014
Current wildland firefighter safety zone guidelines are based on studies that assume flat terrain, radiant heating, finite flame width, constant flame temperature and high flame emissivity. Firefighter entrapments and injuries occur across a broad range of vegetation, terrain and atmospheric conditions generally when they are within two flame heights of the fire. Injury is not confined to radiant heating or flat terrain; consequently, convective heating should be considered as a potential heating mode. Current understanding of energy transport in wildland fires is briefly summarised, followed…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland fire emissions, carbon, and climate: Modeling fuel consumption
Year: 2014
Fuel consumption specifies the amount of vegetative biomass consumed during wildland fire. It is a two-stage process of pyrolysis and combustion that occurs simultaneously and at different rates depending on the characteristics and condition of the fuel, weather, topography, and in the case of prescribed fire, ignition rate and pattern. Fuel consumption is the basic process that leads to heat absorbing emissions called greenhouse gas and other aerosol emissions that can impact atmospheric and ecosystem processes, carbon stocks, and land surface reflectance. It is a critical requirement for…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Modeling Regional-Scale Wildland Fire Emissions with the Wildland Fire Emissions Information System
Year: 2014
As carbon modeling tools become more comprehensive, spatialdata are needed to improve quantitative maps of carbon emissions from fire.The Wildland Fire Emissions Information System (WFEIS) provides mappedestimates of carbon emissions from historical forest fires in the United Statesthrough a web browser. WFEIS improves access to data and provides a consistentapproach to estimating emissions at landscape, regional, and continentalscales. The system taps into data and tools developed by the U.S. Forest Serviceto describe fuels, fuel loadings, and fuel consumption and merges informationfrom the…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mathematical model and sensor development for measuring energy transfer from wildland fires
Year: 2014
Current practices for measuring high heat flux in scenarios such as wildland forest fires use expensive, thermopile-based sensors, coupled with mathematical models based on a semi-infinite-length scale. Although these sensors are acceptable for experimental testing in laboratories, high error rates or the need for water cooling limits their applications in field experiments. Therefore, a one-dimensional, finite-length scale, transient-heat conduction model was developed and combined with an inexpensive, thermocouple-based rectangular sensor, to create a rapidly deployable, non-cooled sensor…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland Fire management: Are actively managed forests more resilient than passively managed forests?
Year: 2013
Large areas of federal lands in the western states are currently at high risk of severe wildfire and have many insect and disease problems, indicating a significant decline in forest health and resilience. Although research studies have not been done that would measure whether actively managed forests are more resilient to wildfires than passively managed forests, results from studies of hazardous fuels treatment effectiveness and the economic benefits from avoided costs of future wildfire suppression due to fuels treatment can be used to support an affirmative reply to the question. If a…
Publication Type: Report
Allowing a wildfire to burn: estimating the effect on future suppression costs
Year: 2013
Where a legacy of aggressive wildland fire suppression has left forests in need of fuel reduction, allowing wildland fire to burn may provide fuel treatment benefits, thereby reducing suppression costs from subsequent fires. The least-cost-plus-net-value-change model of wildland fire economics includes benefits of wildfire in a framework for evaluating suppression options. In this study, we estimated one component of that benefit – the expected present value of the reduction in suppression costs for subsequent fires arising from the fuel treatment effect of a current fire. To that end, we…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Modelling conditional burn probability patterns for large wildland fires
Year: 2013
We present a technique for modelling conditional burn probability patterns in two dimensions for large wildland fires. The intended use for the model is strategic program planning when information about future fire weather and event durations is unavailable and estimates of the average probabilistic shape and extent of large fires on a landscape are needed. To model average conditional burn probability patterns, we organised historical fire data from Yellowstone National Park, USA, into a set of grids; one grid per fire. We captured various spatial relationships inherent in the gridded data…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The Drivers of Effectiveness of Prescribed Fire Treatment
Year: 2012
Prescribed burning for fuel reduction is a major strategy for reducing the risk from unplanned fire. Although there are theoretical studies suggesting that prescribed fire has a strong negative influence on the subsequent area of unplanned fire (so-called leverage), many empirical studies find a more modest influence. Here, I develop a series of simulations to explore the landscape drivers of leverage. Leverage declines with treatment level in a nonlinear, “decay” relationship, implying diminishing effectiveness. The spatial configuration of the prescribed fire treatment has a major effect:…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Health Effects of Wildland Fire Smoke: Insight from Public Health Science Studies
Year: 2012
Due to the composition and dispersion of wildland fire smoke, particulate matter is the principal pollutant of public health concern. Effects will vary based on the source of smoke but predominantly impact local communities in the same way. Studies of the effects of PM from non-fire sources show that long-term exposure can reduce lung function and cause the development of chronic bronchitis. Short-term exposure (hours or days), typical of wildland fire events, can aggravate lung disease, leading to asthma attacks and acute bronchitis. These effects can also increase the susceptibility to…
Publication Type: Report
Proceedings of the 3rd Human Dimensions of Wildland Fire Conference
Year: 2012
This proceedings contains articles, posters, and abstracts of presentations from the third Human Dimensions of Wildland Fire Conference held 17-19 April 2012 in Seattle Washington. The conference covered the social issues at the root of wildland fire management’s most serious challenges. Specific topics included: firefighter and public safety; shared responsibility for Community Wildland Fire Safety, public perception and management of wildland and prescribed fire smoke, social networks and communication in management of fire risk, organizational communication, preparedness to name just a few…
Publication Type: Conference Proceedings