Background
Wildfires often have long-lasting costs that are difficult to document and are rarely captured in full.
Aims
We provide an example for measuring the full costs of a single wildfire over time, using a case study from the 2010 Schultz Fire near Flagstaff, Arizona, to enhance our understanding of the long-term costs of uncharacteristic wildfire.
Background
Plant flammability is an important factor in fire behaviour and post-fire ecological responses. There is consensus about the broad attributes (or axes) of flammability but little consistency in their measurement.
Background. Social science that seeks to advance wildfire adaptation in the southwestern US states of Arizona and New Mexico remains underdeveloped in comparison with other regions in the USA. Aim.
Wildfire science, policy, and practice lack systematic means for “tailoring” fire adaptation practices to socially diverse human populations and in ways that aggregate existing lessons.
Escalating wildfire activity in the western United States has accelerated adverse societal impacts. Observed increases in wildfire severity and impacts to communities have diverse anthropogenic causes—including the legacy of fire suppression policies, increased development in high-risk zones, and aridification by a warming climate.
Sagebrush-steppe restoration has long been seen as a wicked problem—each case has multifaceted problems with no universal solutions—and thus managers have had to adopt adaptive management techniques to meet ever-changing landscape demands.
Standing dead tree stems (snags) become abundant following disturbances like bark beetle outbreaks and stand-replacing fire. Snags are an important element of wildlife habitat, and when they eventually fall can injure or damage people and infrastructure and contribute to coarse wood and fuels accumulation.
Biological disturbance agents (BDAs) can affect forest composition and structure in multiple ways, including by changing fuels in ways that affect fire risk and behavior. While some research has shown that BDAs can increase the likelihood and severity of wildfires, other research has shown the opposite. These opposing findings have led to confusion around the influence of BDAs on fuels and fire behavior, and uncertainty about the best ways to manage for their impacts in western fire-adapted forests.
To better understand the complex relationships at play in how BDAs impact fuels and fire, authors of this article identified the major BDA groups in western coniferous U.S. forests and reviewed existing literature on these groups to conceptualize how BDA-affected fuels will influence fire risk and outcomes. The resulting conceptual framework provides a generalized approach for characterizing BDA outcomes on fuels over time and space, including expected impacts on fuels heterogeneity throughout a BDA groups’ life history. These expected fuels outcomes in turn help develop hypotheses for BDA effects on fire risk and severity.
This webinar highlights the findings of several recent studies looking at the effectiveness of fuel treatments conducted at a landscape scale. After a brief overview, it includes short presentations looking at the empirical evidence, simulation studies, case studies, and a new methodology for looking at the effectiveness of landscape-scale treatments. These studies were the outcome of a Joint Fire Science Program grant received by the Rocky Mountain Research Station. Webinar organized by several western Fire Science Exchanges.
Catastrophic wildfires in the western United States pose significant risks to public health, infrastructure, and ecosystems. As these wildfires become more frequent, there is a growing need for a common methodology to identify suitable locations for prescribed burning aimed at mitigating future wildfire impacts to affected populations and ecosystems.