Research Database
Displaying 81 - 100 of 118
Bridging the divide between fire safety research and fighting fire safely: how do we convey research innovation to contribute more effectively to wildland firefighter safety?
Year: 2017
Creating a safe workplace for wildland firefighters has long been at the centre of discussion for researchers and practitioners. The goal of wildland fire safety research has been to protect operational firefighters, yet its contributions often fall short of potential because much is getting lost in the translation of peer-reviewed results to potential and intended users. When information that could enhance safety is not adopted by individuals, the potential to improve safety – to decipher the wildland fire physical or social environment and to recognise hazards – is lost. We use firefighter…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire risk associated with different vegetation types within and outside wildland-urban interfaces
Year: 2016
Wildland-urban interfaces (WUIs) are areas where urban settlements and wildland vegetation intermingle, making the interaction between human activities and wildlife especially intense. Their relevance is increasing worldwide as they are expanding and are associated with fire risk. The WUI may affect the fire risk associated with the type of vegetation (land cover/land use; LULC), a well-known risk factor, due to differences in the type and intensity of human activities in different LULCs within and outside WUIs. No previous studies analyse this interaction between the effects of the WUI and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Facilitating knowledge transfer between researchers and wildfire practitioners about trust: An international case study
Year: 2016
The importance of knowledge transfer between researchers, policy makers and practitioners is widely recognized. However, barriers to knowledge transfer can make it difficult for practitioners to apply the results of scientific research. This paper describes a project that addressed barriers to knowledge transfer by involving wildfire management practitioners from three countries in developing a trust planning guide. The guide provides information about trust, factors that influence trust and actions that can be taken to build trust in the context of wildfire management. The researchers…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Enhancing adaptive capacity for restoring fire-dependent ecosystems: the Fire Learning Network’s Prescribed Fire Training Exchanges
Year: 2015
Prescribed fire is a critical tool for promoting restoration and increasing resilience in fire-adapted ecosystems, but there are barriers to its use, including a shortage of personnel with adequate ecological knowledge and operational expertise to implement prescribed fire across multijurisdictional landscapes. In the United States, recognized needs for both professional development and increased use of fire are not being met, often because of institutional limitations. The Fire Learning Network has been characterized as a multiscalar, collaborative network that works to enhance the adaptive…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Sources and implications of bias and uncertainty in a century of US wildfire activity data
Year: 2015
Analyses to identify and relate trends in wildfire activity to factors such as climate, population, land use or land cover and wildland fire policy are increasingly popular in the United States. There is a wealth of US wildfire activity data available for such analyses, but users must be aware of inherent reporting biases, inconsistencies and uncertainty in the data in order to maximise the integrity and utility of their work. Data for analysis are generally acquired from archival summary reports of the federal or interagency fire organisations; incident-level wildfire reporting systems of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A bird’s-eye view: Land-use planning and assessments in Oregon and Washington
Year: 2015
Developing forest lands and agricultural lands for other uses has wide-ranging implications. Land development can affect production from forest and agricultural lands, wildlife habitat quality, the spread of invasive species, water quality, wildfire control, and infrastructure costs. In its attempts to mitigate these effects, Oregon implemented statewide land-use planning laws in the early 1970s. Washington established less prescriptive laws in the 1990s. Policymakers, land managers, and various interest groups want to know the effect these laws have had on land use. Scientists with the…
Publication Type: Report
Temperate forest health in an era of emerging megadisturbance
Year: 2015
Although disturbances such as fire and native insects can contribute to natural dynamics of forest health, exceptional droughts, directly and in combination with other disturbance factors, are pushing some temperate forests beyond thresholds of sustainability. Interactions from increasing temperatures, drought, native insects and pathogens, and uncharacteristically severe wildfire are resulting in forest mortality beyond the levels of 20th-century experience. Additional anthropogenic stressors, such as atmospheric pollution and invasive species, further weaken trees in some regions. Although…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Does wildfire likelihood increase following insect outbreaks in conifer forests?
Year: 2015
Although there is acute concern that insect-caused tree mortality increases the likelihood or severity of subsequent wildfire, previous studies have been mixed, with findings typically based on stand-scale simulations or individual events. This study investigates landscape- and regional-scale wildfire likelihood following outbreaks of the two most prevalent native insect pests in the US Pacific Northwest (PNW): mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae) and western spruce budworm (WSB; Choristoneura freemani). We leverage seamless census data across numerous insect and fire events to…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Smoke management of wildfire and prescribed fire: understanding public preferences and trade-offs
Year: 2014
Smoke from forest fires is a serious and increasing land management concern. However, a paucity of information exists that is specific to public perceptions of smoke. This study used conjoint analysis, a multivariate technique, to evaluate how four situational factors (i.e., smoke origin, smoke duration, health impact, and advanced warning) influence public tolerance of smoke in the northern Rocky Mountains and south-central United States. Separate analyses were performed for subgroups, based on community type, level of fire preparedness, demographics, and smoke experience, to explore…
Publication Type: Journal Article
An Evaluation of Fire Regime Reconstruction Methods
Year: 2014
Ecological restoration is a practice that seeks to heal degraded ecosystems by reestablishing native species, structural characteristics, and ecological processes. The Society for Ecological Restoration International defines ecological restoration as “an intentional activity that initiates or accelerates the recovery of an ecosystem with respect to its health, integrity and sustainability….Restoration attempts to return an ecosystem to its historic trajectory” (Society for Ecological Restoration International Science and Policy Working Group 2004). Most frequent-fire forests throughout the…
Publication Type: Report
Beyond reducing fire hazard: fuel treatment impacts on overstory tree survival
Year: 2014
Fuel treatment implementation in dry forest types throughout the western United States is likely to increase in pace and scale in response to increasing incidence of large wildfires. While it is clear that properly implemented fuel treatments are effective at reducing hazardous fire potential, there are ancillary ecological effects that can impact forest resilience either positively or negatively depending on the specific elements examined, as well as treatment type, timing, and intensity. In this study, we use overstory tree growth responses, measured seven years after the most common fuel…
Publication Type: Journal Article
How risk management can prevent future wildfire disasters in the wildland-urban interface
Year: 2014
Recent fire seasons in the western United States are some of the most damaging and costly on record. Wildfires in the wildland-urban interface on the Colorado Front Range, resulting in thousands of homes burned and civilian fatalities, although devastating, are not without historical reference. These fires are consistent with the characteristics of large, damaging, interface fires that threaten communities across much of the western United States. Wildfires are inevitable, but the destruction of homes, ecosystems, and lives is not. We propose the principles of risk analysis to provide land…
Publication Type: Report
Contemporary forest restoration: A review emphasizing function
Year: 2014
The forest restoration challenge (globally 2 billion ha) and the prospect of changing climate with increasing frequency of extreme events argues for approaching restoration from a functional and landscape perspective. Because the practice of restoration utilizes many techniques common to silviculture, no clear line separates ordinary forestry practices from restoration. The distinction may be that extra-ordinary activities are required in the face of degraded, damaged, or destroyed ecosystems. Restoration is driven by the desire to increase sustainability of ecosystems and their services and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Western Spruce Budworm Outbreaks Did Not Increase Fire Risk Over the Last Three Centuries: A Dendrochronological Analysis of Inter-Disturbance Synergism
Year: 2014
Insect outbreaks are often assumed to increase the severity or probability of fire occurrence through increased fuel availability, while fires may in turn alter susceptibility of forests to subsequent insect outbreaks through changes in the spatial distribution of suitable host trees. However, little is actually known about the potential synergisms between these natural disturbances. Assessing inter-disturbance synergism is challenging due to the short length of historical records and the confounding influences of land use and climate changes on natural disturbance dynamics. We used…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The role of defensible space for residential structure protection during wildfires
Year: 2014
With the potential for worsening fire conditions, discussion is escalating over how to best reduce effects on urban communities. A widely supported strategy is the creation of defensible space immediately surrounding homes and other structures. Although state and local governments publish specific guidelines and requirements, there is little empirical evidence to suggest how much vegetation modification is needed to provide significant benefits. We analysed the role of defensible space by mapping and measuring a suite of variables on modern pre-fire aerial photography for 1000 destroyed and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Making a World of Difference in Fire and Climate Change
Year: 2014
Together with other stressors, interactions between fire and climate change are expressing their potential to drive ecosystem shifts and losses in biodiversity. Closely linked to human well-being in most regions of the globe, fires and their consequences should no longer be regarded as repeated surprise events. Instead, we should regard fires as common and enduring components of most terrestrial systems, including their social context. At the global scale, too much fire and the wrong kinds of fire are trumping not enough fire as the most influential fire problems we must address. Intensified…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Eastern Washington Forest Health: Hazards, Accomplishments and Restoration Strategy
Year: 2014
Much of the 10 million acres of forestland in eastern Washington faces serious threats to forest health. Decades of fire suppression and past management practices that changed the species and structure of these forests have put them at higher risk of damage by disease, insects and wildfire.
Publication Type: Report
American Voters' Views of Wildfires
Year: 2013
Forty-four percent (44%) of voters see uncontrollable wildfires as a serious problem. Equal numbers of voters say wildfires in the country are worse than they were five years ago as say they are about the same. On a personal level, a majority of voters are either more worried about wildfires affecting their own personal safety than they were five years ago, or worried the same amount. A majority of voters say that forest fires are unpredictable and dangerous and should be contained and extinguished as soon as they are discovered.
Publication Type: Report
Swiss Needle Cast
Year: 2013
Since the 1990s, there has been an epidemic of SNC affecting hundreds of thousands of acres of coastal Douglas-fir forests in Oregon, Washington and British Columbia. This constitutes one of the largest foliage-disease epidemics of conifers in North America. SNC is also a localized problem in many inland areas of the west, especially in Montana, Idaho, British Columbia, Washington, and Oregon.
Publication Type: Report
Building community-agency trust in fire affected communities in Australia and the United States
Year: 2013
As a result of the increasing environmental and social costs of wildfire, fire management agencies face ever-growing complexity in their management decisions and interactions with the public. The success of these interactions with community members may be facilitated through building community–agency trust in the process of providing public input opportunities and community engagement and education activities. Without trust, the public may become frustrated in their interactions with the agency and withhold support for management decisions. This study takes a comparative case approach using…
Publication Type: Journal Article