Research Database
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13
Climate stress increases forest fire severity across the western United States
Year: 2013
Pervasive warming can lead to chronic stress on forest trees, which may contribute to mortality resultingfrom fire-caused injuries. Longitudinal analyses of forest plots from across the western US show that highpre-fire climatic water deficit was related to increased post-fire tree mortality probabilities. This relationshipbetween climate and fire was present after accounting for fire defences and injuries, and appeared to influencethe effects of crown and stem injuries. Climate and fire interactions did not vary substantially acrossgeographical regions, major genera and tree sizes. Our…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fire-mediated pathways of stand development in Douglas-fir/ western hemlock forests of the Pacific Northwest, USA
Year: 2013
Forests dominated by Douglas-fir and western hemlock in the Pacific Northwest of the United States have strongly influenced concepts and policy concerning old-growth forest conservation. Despite the attention to their old-growth characteristics, a tendency remains to view their disturbance ecology in relatively simple terms, emphasizing infrequent, stand-replacing (SR) fire and an associated linear pathway toward development of those old-growth characteristics. This study uses forest stand- and age-structure data from 124 stands in the central western Cascades of Oregon to construct a…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Living in a tinderbox: wildfire risk perceptions and mitigating behaviors
Year: 2013
The loss of homes to wildfires is an important issue in the USA and other countries. Yet many homeowners living in fire-prone areas do not undertake mitigating actions, such as clearing vegetation, to decrease the risk of losing their home. To better understand the complexity of wildfire risk-mitigation decisions and the role of perceived risk, we conducted a survey of homeowners in a fire-prone area of the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado. We examine the relationship between perceived wildfire risk ratings and risk-mitigating behaviours in two ways. First, we model wildfire…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildland firefighter entrapment avoidance: modelling evacuation triggers
Year: 2013
Wildland firefighters are often called on to make tactical decisions under stressful conditions in order to suppress a fire. These decisions can be hindered by human factors such as insufficient knowledge of surroundings and conditions, lack of experience, overextension of resources or loss of situational awareness. One potential tool for assisting fire managers in situations where human factors can hinder decision-making is the Wildland–Urban Interface Evacuation (WUIVAC) model, which models fire minimum travel times to create geographic trigger buffers for evacuation recommendations.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Relationships between climate and macroscale area burned in the western United States
Year: 2013
Increased wildfire activity (e.g. number of starts, area burned, fire behaviour) across the western United States in recent decades has heightened interest in resolving climate–fire relationships. Macroscale climate–fire relationships were examined in forested and non-forested lands for eight Geographic Area Coordination Centers in the western United States, using area burned derived from the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity dataset (1984–2010). Fire-specific biophysical variables including fire danger and water balance metrics were considered in addition to standard climate variables of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Mapping multiple forest threats in the northwestern United States
Year: 2013
US forestlands are increasingly subject to disturbances including wildfire, insects and disease, and urban and exurban development. Devising strategies for addressing these “forest threats“ depends on anticipating where individual disturbances are most likely and where they might occur in combination. However, many spatial data sets describing forest threats are produced at fine scales but are intended only for coarse-scale planning and policy purposes. We demonstrate one way to combine and display forest threat data at their appropriate spatial scales, using spatial data characterizing…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Lessons Learned from Waldo Canyon: FAC mitigation assessment team report
Year: 2013
The Waldo Canyon fire presented the first opportunity for partners in the national Fire Adapted Communities (FAC) Coalition to collectively assess the performance of mitigation practices in Colorado Springs in a post-fire environment and to compare the results to the mitigation strategy recommended by the Fire Adapted Communities program. The assessment was conducted from July 18-20, 2012, by a FAC Wildfire Mitigation Assessment Team, which included two sets of researchers: structural assessment and forestry experts and social science and public education experts, accompanied by staff from…
Publication Type: Report
On the use of a firebrand generator to investigate the ignition of structures in WUI fires
Year: 2013
An experimental apparatus has been constructed to generate a controlled and repeatable size and mass distribution of glowing firebrands. The present study reports on a series of experiments conducted in order to characterize the performance of this firebrand generator. Firebrand generator characterization and subsequent structural ignition experiments were performed at the Fire Research Wind Tunnel Facility (FRWTF) at the Building Research Institute (BRI) in Tsukuba, Japan. The firebrand generator was fed with mulch generated from Korean Pine trees. To produce repeatable initial conditions…
Publication Type: Report
Overcoming barriers to firewise actions by residents
Year: 2013
Encouraging the public to take action (e.g., creating defensible space) that can reduce the likelihood of wildfire damage and decrease the likelihood of injury is a common approach to increasing wildfire safety and damage mitigation. This study was designed to improve our understanding of both individual and community actions that homeowners currently do or might take to protect their home or property, and the barriers that impede homeowners from completing firewise treatments to their home or property.
Publication Type: Report
Fuel Treatments and Fire Severity: A Meta-Analysis
Year: 2013
We employed meta-analysis and information theory to synthesize findings reported in the literature on the effects of fuel treatments on subsequent fire intensity and severity. Data were compiled from 19 publications that reported observed fire responses from 62 treated versus untreated contrasts. Effect sizes varied widely and the most informative grouping of studies distinguished three vegetation types and three types of fuel treatment. The resultant meta-analytic model is highly significant (p<0.001) and explains 78% of the variability in reported observations of fuel treatment…
Publication Type: Report
Social Science at the WUI: A Compendium of Research Results to Create Fire-Adapted Communities
Year: 2013
Over the past decade, a growing body of research has been conducted on the human dimensions of wildland fire. Building on a relatively small number of foundational studies, this research now addresses a wide range of topics including mitigation activities on private lands, fuels reduction treatments on public land, community impacts and resident behaviors during fire, acceptance of approaches to postfire restoration and recovery, and fire management policy and decisionmaking. As this research has matured, there has been a recognition of the need to examine the full body of resulting…
Publication Type: Report
Previous Fires Moderate Burn Severity of Subsequent Wildland Fires in Two Large Western US Wilderness Areas
Year: 2013
Wildland fire is an important natural process in many ecosystems. However, fire exclusion has reduced frequency of fire and area burned in many dry forest types, which may affect vegetation structure and composition, and potential fire behavior. In forests of the western U.S., these effects pose a challenge for fire and land managers who seek to restore the ecological process of fire to ecosystems. Recent research suggests that landscapes with unaltered fire regimes are more ‘‘self-regulating’’ than those that have experienced fire-regime shifts; in self-regulating systems, fire size and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire, Wildlands, and People: Understanding and preparing for wildfire in the wildland-urban interface
Year: 2013
Fire has historically played a fundamental ecological role in many of America’s wildland areas. However, the rising number of homes in the wildland-urban interface (WUI), associated impacts on lives and property from wildfire, and escalating costs of wildfire management have led to an urgent need for communities to become "fire-adapted." We present maps of the conterminous United States that illustrate historical natural fire regimes, the wildland-urban interface, and the number and location of structures burned since 1999. We outline a sampler of actions, programs, and community planning and…
Publication Type: Report