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Background
Fuel moisture content is a key driver of fuel flammability and subsequent fire activity and behavior worldwide. Dead fuels passively exchange moisture with the atmosphere while live fuel moisture is confounded by a mixture of seasonal carbon and water…
Background
Record fire years in recent decades have challenged post-fire forest recovery in the western United States and beyond. To improve management responses, it is critical that we understand the conditions under which management can mitigate severe wildfire impacts…
Background
Forest fuel reduction treatments are intended to mitigate negative impacts from wildland fires, protect communities, and support firefighting. Understanding fuel treatment use is important for evaluating treatment effectiveness, which, in turn, can inform the…
Altered fire regimes are a global challenge, increasingly exacerbated by climate change, which modifies fire weather and prolongs fire seasons. These changing conditions heighten the vulnerability of ecosystems and human populations to the impacts of wildfires on the environment, society, and…
Wildfire structure losses are increasing globally and particularly in California, USA. Losses can be mitigated in part by changes to the Home Ignition Zone (HIZ), including both home hardening and defensible space. In the United States, there are local, nation-wide, and industry-based home…
Pile burning of thinned residues is a critical tool to dispose of fuels and to reduce wildfire risk in overstocked, fire-prone forests globally. However, cost estimates of pile burning are limited. In the Western United States, where fuel reduction and pile burning are key strategies to mitigate…
Background: In response to increasing risk of extreme wildfire across western North America, forest managers are proactively implementing fuel treatments.
Aims: We assessed the efficacy of alternative combinations of thinning, pruning and residue fuel…
In many parts of the western United States, wildfires are becoming larger and more severe, threatening the persistence of forest ecosystems. Understanding the ways in which management activities such as prescribed fire and managed wildfire can mitigate fire severity is essential for developing…
Drivers of forest wildfire severity include fuels, topography and weather. However, because only fuels can be actively managed, quantifying their effects on severity has become an urgent research priority. Here we employed GEDI spaceborne lidar to consistently assess how pre-fire forest fuel…
We present a mixed integer programming model for prioritizing fuel treatments within a landscape fuel break network to maximize protection against wildfires, measured by the total fire size reduction or the sum of Wildland Urban Interface areas avoided from burning. This model uses a large…