Forest Service Spending on Large Wildfires in the West
The purpose of this report is to shed light on fire suppression spending as a starting point for understanding the economic impacts of large fires.
The purpose of this report is to shed light on fire suppression spending as a starting point for understanding the economic impacts of large fires.
Although fire managers, policymakers, and communities are benefiting from better understanding of suppression costs, property losses, and community impacts of large fires, no generalizable empirical research has quantified the specific effect of large wildfires on local employment and wages.
Contracting capacity and local capture can be the result of local economic conditions (supply side conditions) as well as agency contracting practices (demand side conditions). In order to capture contracts locally, local businesses that can perform the work need to exist, and past experience contracting with the federal government is a reasonable indicator of that capacity.
The Fremont-Winema National Forest and the Lakeview Stewardship Group were awarded funding under the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration (CFLR) Program in 2012 for the 662,289 acre Lakeview Stewardship Project. The CFLR Program, administered by the U.S.
The Northwest Fire Science Consortium (Consortium) works to accelerate the awareness, understanding, and adoption of wildland fire science by connecting users in the Pacific Northwest with the most useful resources available.
Thinning is one of the most powerful forest management tools available to landowners for achieving a wide range of goals and objectives.
Thinning to reduce hazardous fuels often generates large amounts of woody residues, such as small-diameter logs, tree tops, and branches. This publication discusses several options for economically and effectively using and disposing of woody material.
Many manual and mechanical methods are used to reduce hazardous fuels on woodland properties. This publication describes three of the most common methods: Slashbusting and grinding Mowing and mastication Crushing Mechanical methods use several types of equipment to chop, chip, crush, or otherwise break apart fuels—such as brush, small trees, and slash—into small pieces or chips.
Pruning is removing the lower branches of trees. Increasing the distance between the ground and the lowest tree branches reduces the likelihood that a fire on the ground will use the branches as a ladder to move into tree crowns.
Prescribed fire is a primary tool used to restore western forests following more than a century of fire exclusion, reducing fire hazard by removing dead and live fuels (small trees and shrubs).