Research Database
Displaying 161 - 180 of 251
Return on investment from fuel treatments to reduce severe wildfire and erosion in a watershed investment program in Colorado
Year: 2017
A small but growing number of watershed investment programs in the western United States focus on wildfire risk reduction to municipal water supplies. This paper used return on investment (ROI) analysis to quantify how the amounts and placement of fuel treatment interventions would reduce sediment loading to the Strontia Springs Reservoir in the Upper South Platte River watershed southwest of Denver, Colorado following an extreme fire event. We simulated various extents of fuel mitigation activities under two placement strategies: (a) a strategic treatment prioritization map and (b)…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Federal fire managers’ perceptions of the importance, scarcity and substitutability of suppression resources
Year: 2017
Wildland firefighting in the United States is a complex and costly enterprise. While there are strong seasonal signatures for fire occurrence in specific regions of the United States, spatiotemporal occurrence of wildfire activity can have high inter-annual variability. Suppression resources come from a variety of jurisdictions and provide a wide range of skills, experience and associated mobility and logistical needs. Dispatch centres and regional and national resource allocation centres move suppression resources to respond to demand. However, little is known about the 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…
Publication Type: Report
Available Science Assessment Project: Prescribed Fire and Climate Change in Northwest National Forests
Year: 2016
Climate change is one of the most pressing issues facing natural resource management. The disruptions it is causing require that we change how we consider conservation and resource management in order to ensure the future of habitats, species, and human communities, whether that means adopting new actions or adjusting the ways in which existing actions are implemented. However, practitioners often struggle with how to identify and prioritize specific climate adaptation actions, which are taken to either increase/enhance resilience or decrease vulnerability in a changing climate. Management…
Publication Type: Report
Forest management scenarios in a changing climate: trade-offs between carbon, timber, and old forest
Year: 2016
Balancing economic, ecological, and social values has long been a challenge in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, where conflict over timber harvest and old-growth habitat on public lands has been contentious for the past several decades. The Northwest Forest Plan, adopted two decades ago to guide management on federal lands, is currently being revised as the region searches for a balance between sustainable timber yields and habitat for sensitive species. In addition, climate change imposes a high degree of uncertainty on future forest productivity, sustainability of timber harvest,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Scanning the Future of Wildfire: Resilience Ahead...Whether We Like It or Not?
Year: 2016
The field of so-called “futures research” provides researchers and stakeholders in a given subject area or system a way to map out and plan for alternate possible scenarios of the future. A recent research project supported by the Joint Fire Science Program brought together futures researchers and wildfire specialists to envision what the future holds for wildfire impacts and how the wildfire community may respond to the complex suite of emerging challenges. The consensus of the project’s foresight panel suggests that an era of resilience is ahead: but that this resilience may come either…
Publication Type: Report
Developing and Implementing Climate Change Adaptation Options in Forest Ecosystems: A Case Study in Southwestern Oregon, USA
Year: 2016
Climate change will likely have significant effects on forest ecosystems worldwide. In Mediterranean regions, such as that in southwestern Oregon, USA, changes will likely be driven mainly by wildfire and drought. To minimize the negative effects of climate change, resource managers require tools and information to assess climate change vulnerabilities and to develop and implement adaptation actions. We developed an approach to facilitate development and implementation of climate change adaptation options in forest management. This approach, applied in a southwestern Oregon study region,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Drivers of Wildfire Suppression Costs: A Review
Year: 2016
As federal spending on wildland fire suppression has increased dramatically in recent decades, significant policymaking has been designed, at least in part, to address and temper rising costs. Effective strategies for controlling public spending and leveraging limited wildfire management resources depend on a comprehensive understanding of the drivers of suppression costs. Problematically, frequently noted drivers often do not explain variability between similar wildfires or comparable wildfire seasons. As speculation and scrutiny around rising costs have increased, so too have scholarly…
Publication Type: Report
Living on a flammable planet: interdisciplinary, cross-scalar and varied cultural lessons, prospects and challenges
Year: 2016
Living with fire is a challenge for human communities because they are influenced by socio-economic, political, ecological and climatic processes at various spatial and temporal scales. Over the course of 2 days, the authors discussed how communities could live with fire challenges at local, national and transnational scales. Exploiting our diverse, international and interdisciplinary expertise, we outline generalizable properties of fire-adaptive communities in varied settings where cultural knowledge of fire is rich and diverse. At the national scale, we discussed policy and management…
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
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…
Publication Type: Report
Assessing the impacts of federal forest planning on wildfire risk-mitigation in the Pacific Northwest, USA
Year: 2016
We analyzed the impact of amenity and biodiversity protection as mandated in national forest plans on the implementation of hazardous fuel reduction treatments aimed at protecting the wildland urban interface (WUI) and restoring fire resilient forests. We used simulation modeling to delineate areas on national forests that can potentially transmit fires to adjacent WUI. We then intersected these areas with national forest planning maps to determine where mechanical treatments are allowed for restoration and fire protection, versus areas where they are prohibited. We found that a large…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Tamm Review: Are fuel treatments effective at achieving ecological and social objectives? A systematic review
Year: 2016
The prevailing paradigm in the western U.S. is that the increase in stand-replacing wildfires in historically frequent-fire dry forests is due to unnatural fuel loads that have resulted from management activities including fire suppression, logging, and grazing, combined with more severe drought conditions and increasing temperatures. To counteract unnaturally high fuel loads, fuel reduction treatments which are designed to reduce fire hazard and improve overall ecosystem functioning have been increasing over the last decade. However, until recently much of what we knew about treatment…
Publication Type: Journal Article
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
Risk terminology primer: Basic principles and a glossary for the wildland fire management community
Year: 2016
Risk management is being increasingly promoted as an appropriate method for addressing wildland fire management challenges. However, a lack of a common understanding of risk concepts and terminology is hindering effective application. In response, this General Technical Report provides a set of clear, consistent, understandable, and usable definitions for terms associated with wildland fire risk management. The material presented herein is not brand-new or innovative per se, but rather synthesizes the extant science so that readers can readily make a crosswalk to the professional literature.…
Publication Type: Report
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…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Examining alternative fuel management strategies and the relative contribution of National Forest System land to wildfire risk to adjacent homes – A pilot assessment on the Sierra National Forest, California, USA
Year: 2016
Determining the degree of risk that wildfires pose to homes, where across the landscape the risk originates, and who can best mitigate risk are integral elements of effective co-management of wildfire risk. Developing assessments and tools to help provide this information is a high priority for federal land management agencies such as the US Forest Service (USFS) that have limited resources to invest in hazardous fuel reduction and other mitigation activities. In this manuscript we investigate the degree to which fuel management practices on USFS land can reduce wildfire exposure to human…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wilderness in the 21st Century: A Framework for Testing Assumptions about Ecological Intervention in Wilderness Using a Case Study in Fire Ecology in the Rocky Mountains
Year: 2016
Changes in the climate and in key ecological processes are prompting increased debate about ecological restoration and other interventions in wilderness. The prospect of intervention in wilderness raises legal, scientific, and values-based questions about the appropriateness of possible actions. In this article, we focus on the role of science to elucidate the potential need for intervention. We review the meaning of “untrammeled” from the 1964 Wilderness Act to aid our understanding of the legal context for potential interventions in wilderness. We explore the tension between restraint and…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Evaluating Prescribed Fire Effectiveness Using Permanent Monitoring Plot Data: A Case Study
Year: 2016
Since Euro-American settlement, ponderosa pine forests throughout the western United States have shifted from high fire frequency and open canopy savanna forests to infrequent fire and dense, closed canopy forests. Managers at Zion National Park, USA, reintroduced fire to counteract these changes and decrease the potential for high-severity fires. We analyzed existing permanent monitoring plot data collected between 1995 and 2010 to assess achievement of management objectives related to prescribed fire in ponderosa pine forests. Following first entry fire, ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa C.…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Risk management: Core principles and practices, and their relevance to wildland fire
Year: 2016
The Forest Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture faces a future of increasing complexity and risk, pressing financial issues, and the inescapable possibility of loss of human life. These issues are perhaps most acute for wildland fire management, the highest risk activity in which the Forest Service engages. Risk management (RM) has long been put forth as an appropriate approach for addressing fire, and agency-wide adoption of RM principles and practices will be critical to bring about necessary change and improve future decisions. To facilitate more comprehensive adoption of formal RM…
Publication Type: Report