Research Database

Publication Type: Report

The normal fire environment—Modeling environmental suitability for large forest wildfires using past, present, and future climate normals

Year: 2017

We modeled the normal fire environment for occurrence of large forest wildfires (>40 ha) for the Pacific Northwest Region of the United States. Large forest wildfire occurrence data from the recent climate normal period (1971–2000) was used as the response variable and fire season precipitation, maximum temperature, slope, and elevation were used as predictor variables. A projection of our model onto the 2001–2030 climate normal period showed strong agreement between model predictions and the area of forest burned by large wildfires from 2001 to 2015 (independent fire data). We then used…

Publication Type: Journal Article

Bridging the gap: Joint Fire Science Program Outcomes

Year: 2017

The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) has funded an impressive number of research projects over the years. However, the number of projects does not necessarily provide an accurate picture of the program’s effectiveness. Over the last decade, researchers have collected data and conducted several studies to determine whether the results of JFSP-funded projects are reaching potential users and informing management decisions and actions. Those studies have helped identify issues and influence changes within the program. Early studies pointed out the need for a boundary-spanning organization to…

Communicating about Fire

Fire History, Public Perceptions of Fire and Smoke

Publication Type: Report

Using an agent-based model to examine forest management outcomes in a fire-prone landscape in Oregon, USA.

Year: 2017

Fire-prone landscapes present many challenges for both managers and policy makers in developing adaptive behaviors and institutions. We used a coupled human and natural systems framework and an agent-based landscape model to examine how alternative management scenarios affect fire and ecosystem services metrics in a fire-prone multiownership landscape in the eastern Cascades of Oregon. Our model incorporated existing models of vegetation succession and fire spread and information from original empirical studies of landowner decision making. Our findings indicate that alternative management…

Mixed-Conifer Management

adaptation, management, modeling

Publication Type: Journal Article

Telling Fire’s Story through Narrative and Art

Year: 2017

Modern works by highly skilled narrative authors and artists have become increasingly useful for telling the story of wildland fire in the United States. Using unconventional means—and with partial funding by the Joint Fire Science Program—creative individuals have spawned some colorful and heartfelt messages that convey insightful information about wildland fire, climate, and other elements of nature to an increasingly receptive public. Recent narrative works by well-known authors, such as Stephen J. Pyne, and creative art pieces by well-established and emerging artists have helped depict…

Fuels and Fuel Treatments, Restoration and Hazardous Fuel Reduction

Publication Type: Report

Effects of accelerated wildfire on future fire regimes and implications for the United States federal fire policy

Year: 2017

Wildland fire suppression practices in the western United States are being widely scrutinized by policymakers and scientists as costs escalate and large fires increasingly affect social and ecological values. One potential solution is to change current fire suppression tactics to intentionally increase the area burned under conditions when risks are acceptable to managers and fires can be used to achieve long-term restoration goals in fire adapted forests. We conducted experiments with the Envision landscape model to simulate increased levels of wildfire over a 50-year period on a 1.2 million…

modeling, decision making

Publication Type: Journal Article

Relational risk assessment and management: investigating capacity in wildfire response networks

Year: 2017

Failures in effective communication and coordination within the network of responding organizations and agencies during a wildfire can lead to problematic or dangerous outcomes. Although risk assessment and management concepts are usually understood with regards to biophysical attributes in the wildfire context, these concepts can be extended to understanding risk for problematic communication and coordination embedded within social and organizational relationships. In this research, we propose leveraging existing network and social coordination theory to investigate how pre-fire…

Risk Assessment and Analysis

Climate Change and Fire, Fire Effects and Fire Ecology

Publication Type: Report

Climate change and the eco-hydrology of fire: will area burned increase in a warming western USA?

Year: 2017

Wildfire area is predicted to increase with global warming. Empirical statistical models and process-based simulations agree almost universally. The key relationship for this unanimity, observed at multiple spatial and temporal scales, is between drought and fire. Predictive models often focus on ecosystems in which this relationship appears to be particularly strong, such as mesic and arid forests and shrublands with substantial biomass such as chaparral. We examine the drought-fire relationship, specifically the correlations between water-balance deficit and annual area burned, across the…

Risk Assessment and Analysis

Publication Type: Journal Article

A LiDAR-based analysis of the effects of slope, vegetation density, and ground surface roughness on travel rates for wildland firefighter escape route mapping

Year: 2017

Escape routes are essential components of wildland firefighter safety, providing pre-defined pathways to a safety zone. Among the many factors that affect travel rates along an escape route, landscape conditions such as slope, low-lying vegetation density, and ground surface roughness are particularly influential, and can be measured using airborne light detection and ranging (LiDAR) data. In order to develop a robust, quantitative understanding of the effects of these landscape conditions on travel rates, we performed an experiment wherein study participants were timed while walking along a…

evacuation, remote sensing, modeling, fire suppression

Publication Type: Journal Article

Mortality predictions of fire-injured large Douglas-fir and ponderosa pine in Oregon and Washington, USA

Year: 2017

Wild and prescribed fire-induced injury to forest trees can produce immediate or delayed tree mortality but fire-injured trees can also survive. Land managers use logistic regression models that incorporate tree-injury variables to discriminate between fatally injured trees and those that will survive. We used data from 4024 ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa Dougl. ex Laws.) and 3804 Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii (Mirb.) Franco) trees from 23 fires across Oregon and Washington to assess the discriminatory ability of 21 existing logistic regression models and a polychotomous key (Scott…

Fire Effects and Fire Ecology

post-fire, modeling

Publication Type: Journal Article

The Science of Fuel Treatments

Year: 2017

High fuel loads can significantly contribute to the intensity and severity of fires. Fuels include plant material, such as leaves, bark, needles, branches, and vegetation. Land managers use various methods to reduce fuel levels. The two most common fuel treatment methods include forest thinning and prescribed fire. The pace of implementing such fuel treatments has increased over the last several decades. Scientific studies of fuel treatments supported by the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) highlight significant findings on the effectiveness of these treatments in various fuel types.

Fuels and Fuel Treatments

Climate Change and Fire, Fire Effects and Fire Ecology, Soils and Woody Debris

Publication Type: Report

Climate, wildfire, and erosion ensemble foretells more sediment in western USA watersheds

Year: 2017

The area burned annually by wildfires is expected to increase worldwide due to climate change. Burned areas increase soil erosion rates within watersheds, which can increase sedimentation in downstream rivers and reservoirs. However, which watersheds will be impacted by future wildfires is largely unknown. Using an ensemble of climate, fire, and erosion models, we show that postfire sedimentation is projected to increase for nearly nine tenths of watersheds by >10% and for more than one third of watersheds by >100% by the 2041 to 2050 decade in the western USA. The projected increases…

Fire Effects and Fire Ecology

Publication Type: Journal Article

Studying interregional wildland fire engine assignments for large fire suppression

Year: 2017

One crucial component of large fire response in the United States (US) is the sharing of wildland firefighting resources between regions: resources from regions experiencing low fire activity supplement resources in regions experiencing high fire activity. An important step towards improving the efficiency of resource sharing and related policies is to develop a better understanding of current assignment patterns. In this paper we examine the set of interregional wildland fire engine assignments for incidents in California and the Southwest Geographic Coordination Areas, utilising data from…

management, modeling

Publication Type: Journal Article

Quantifying the influence of previously burned areas on suppression effectiveness and avoided exposure: a case study of the Las Conchas Fire

Year: 2016

We present a case study of the Las Conchas Fire (2011) to explore the role of previously burned areas (wildfires and prescribed fires) on suppression effectiveness and avoided exposure. Methodological innovations include characterisation of the joint dynamics of fire growth and suppression activities, development of a fire line effectiveness framework, and quantification of relative fire line efficiencies inside and outside of previously burned areas. We provide descriptive statistics of several fire line effectiveness metrics. Additionally, we leverage burn probability modelling to examine…

Fire Effects and Fire Ecology

modeling, fire suppression, management, wildland fire

Publication Type: Journal Article

Impact of anthropogenic climate change on wildfire across western US forests

Year: 2016

Increased forest fire activity across the western continental United States (US) in recent decades has likely been enabled by a number of factors, including the legacy of fire suppression and human settlement, natural climate variability, and human-caused climate change. We use modeled climate projections to estimate the contribution of anthropogenic climate change to observed increases in eight fuel aridity metrics and forest fire area across the western United States. Anthropogenic increases in temperature and vapor pressure deficit significantly enhanced fuel aridity across western US…

Publication Type: Journal Article

Secretarial Order 3336 Science Priorities: The Role of Science Past, Present, and Future

Year: 2016

Within sagebrush (Artemisia spp.) ecosystems, which are home to more than 350 species of plants and animals, potentially more frequent and severe fires are causing an increased threat to human safety, property, rural economies, and wildlife habitat. In particular, the habitat of the greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus), an iconic sagebrush-dependent species, is at risk. In response to this reality, on January 15, 2015, Secretary Sally Jewell signed Secretarial Order 3336 (S.O. 3336), titled “Rangeland Fire Prevention, Management, and Restoration.” The main purpose of the order is…

Fire and Rangelands

Social and Community Impacts of Fire

Publication Type: Report

Polishing the Prism: Improving Wildfire Mitigation Planning by Coupling Landscape and Social Dimensions

Year: 2016

Effectively addressing wildfire risk to communities on large multi-owner landscapes requires an understanding of the biophysical factors that influence risk, such as fuel loads, topography, and weather, and social factors such as the capacity and willingness for communities to engage in fire-mitigation activities. Biophysical and social processes often are disconnected in wildfire mitigation planning frameworks because of mismatches in scale. The different spatial and temporal scales of these processes usually are not recognized in the planning process. Forest Service scientists Alan Ager,…

Publication Type: Report

Incorporating Anthropogenic Influences into Fire Probability Models: Effects of Human Activity and Climate Change on Fire Activity in California

Year: 2016

The costly interactions between humans and wildfires throughout California demonstrate the need to understand the relationships between them, especially in the face of a changing climate and expanding human communities. Although a number of statistical and process-based wildfire models exist for California, there is enormous uncertainty about the location and number of future fires, with previously published estimates of increases ranging from nine to fifty-three percent by the end of the century. Our goal is to assess the role of climate and anthropogenic influences on the state’s fire…

Publication Type: Journal Article

Climate-driven changes in forest succession and the influence of management on forest carbon dynamics in the Puget Lowlands of Washington State, USA

Year: 2016

Projecting the response of forests to changing climate requires understanding how biotic and abiotic controls on tree growth will change over time. As temperature and interannual precipitation variability increase, the overall forest response is likely to be influenced by species-specific responses to changing climate. Management actions that alter composition and density may help buffer forests against the effects of changing climate, but may require tradeoffs in ecosystem services. We sought to quantify how projected changes in climate and different management regimes would alter the…