Several trends have emerged in recent years that affect the management of the National Forest System, particularly in the western U.S. One is the recognition of landscapes departed from a natural range of variation, especially with implications for wildfire management.
Over the past century, wildland fire management has been core to the mission of federal land management agencies.
Wildfire has become a growing threat for communities across the American West and a complex concern for agencies tasked with community protection. This task has grown more difficult due to the increasing inci-dence of large fires and the continued expansion of the wildland-urban interface (WUI), the area where human habitations and wildland fuels abut or in-termix.
In this study, researchers investigated the extent of forest restoration needed to move present day forests towards a NRV across fire-adapted landscapes in eastern Washington, eastern Oregon, and southwestern Oregon. They assessed forest vegetation restoration needs for over 28 million acres of forest based on the distribution of different forest types (e.g., Dry Mixed Conifer vs. Moist Mixed Conifer) and the current relative abundance of structural classes (see below) compared to NRV reference conditions. Using this approach, researchers determined which structural classes were overrepresented and underrepresented in each landscape unit. They then evaluated which of several different treatment or restoration categories (‘Disturbance Only’, ‘Disturbance then Succession’, and ‘Succession Only’) could transition acres to structural classesthat would restore a distribution of classes to within the NRV reference conditions.
Over the past century, wildland fire management has been core to the mission of federal land management agencies. In recent decades, however, federal spending on wildfire suppression has increased dramatically; suppression spending that on average accounted for less than 20 percent of the USFS’s discretionary funds prior to 2000 had grown to 43 percent of discretionary funds by 2008 (USDA 2009), and 51 percent in 2014 (USDA 2014). Rising suppression costs have created budgetary shortfalls and conflict as money “borrowed” from other budgets often cannot be paid back in full, and resources for other program areas and missions are subsumed by suppression expenditures (Thompson et al. 2013). Significant policy making over the past 15 years has been designed, at least in part, to address these issues and temper wildfire costs. Effective political efforts and strategies to control public spending on suppression rely on a thorough and comprehensive understanding of the drivers of suppression costs and recent trends. Currently, scholars and policymakers have little understanding or agreement on the diversity of drivers behind wildfire suppression costs, how drivers vary in different situations, or what specific tactics or approaches might best reign in rising costs. There is great variability in costs between comparable wildfires in the same season, as well as between comparable fire seasons. Problematically, much of this variation is unexplained by frequently noted drivers. As speculation and scrutiny around potential drivers has increased, so too has a growing body of scholarly literature investigating the correlates and influences driving suppression costs. A more comprehensive understanding of the full suite of factors affecting suppression costs can inform how land management agencies can best leverage limited resources for wildfire management, and how budget allocations could more accurately accommodate annual suppression costs. This working paper gathers together existing scholarly literature on wildfire suppression cost drivers. The purpose of the paper is to provide an overview of the diversity of drivers examined in scholarly literature that may influence suppression costs; be a resource for documenting the growth, parameters, and directions in this field of research; and serve as a central collection annotating this literature to date.
During the past two decades, land managers and community leaders in the West have adopted sustainable land management methods to make forests healthier, and to maintain profitable local businesses that are beneficial to their communities.
In this study, researchers analyzed how previous management effortsand other factors including weather and landform influenced burn severityduring the 2006 Tripod Complex Fires, which at the time represented thelargest wildfire event in over 50 years in the state of Washington. The TripodComplex burned over 170,000 acres of mixed-conifer forests, including 387past harvest and fuel-treatment units. By evaluating differences in burn severityin areas with and without harvest and fuel treatments, as well as between areaswith different landform, vegetation, insect outbreak, and weather duringburning, researchers evaluated the relative influence of these drivers on burnseverity during the fire.
To determine the influences of mountain pine beetle epidemics in lodgepole pine forests in south-central Oregon, researchers looked at how ground, surface, ladder, and crown fuels change over time in response to beetle epidemics, and how these epidemics influence current and future fire behavior. By looking at similar stands of varying ages researchers documented changes in stand development and fuels over time and developed a chronosequence covering a range of post-beetle epidemic conditions. Fire behavior was determined at multiple scales using several standard fuel models.
In this study, researchers gathered vegetation and songbird abundance data in the Little Applegate Valley of Jackson County, Oregon. After one year of data collection, a portion of the study area experienced a 6,177-acre mixed-severity wildfire (23% low, 36% moderate, 42% high severity). To better understand how the wildfire affected songbird abundance, they continued to collect data in the burned area as well as an unburned control area for four years after the wildfire.