Research Database
Displaying 141 - 160 of 167
Understanding evacuation preferences and wildfire mitigations among Northwest Montana residents
Year: 2014
There is currently insufficient information in the United States about residents’ planned evacuation actions during wildfire events, including any intent to remain at or near home during fire events. This is incompatible with growing evidence that select populations at risk from wildfire are considering alternatives to evacuation. This study explores the evacuation preferences of wildland–urban interface residents in Flathead County, Montana, USA. We compare the performance of wildfire mitigation and fuel reduction actions across groups of residents with different primary evacuation…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Is fire exclusion in mountain big sagebrush communities prudent? Soil nutrient, plant diversity and arthropod response to burning
Year: 2014
Fire has largely been excluded from many mountain big sagebrush communities. Managers are reluctant to reintroduce fire, especially in communities without significant conifer encroachment, because of the decline in sagebrush-associated wildlife. Given this management direction, a better understanding of fire exclusion and burning effects is needed. We compared burned to unburned plots at six sites in Oregon. Soil nutrient availability generally increased with burning. Plant diversity increased with burning in the first post-burn year, but decreased by the third post-burn year. Burning altered…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Fuel treatment prescriptions alter spatial patterns of fire severity around the wildland-urban interface during the Wallow Fire, Arizona, USA
Year: 2014
Fuel reduction treatments are implemented in the forest surrounding the wildland–urban interface (WUI) to provide defensible space and safe opportunity for the protection of homes during a wildfire. The 2011 Wallow Fire in Arizona USA burned through recently implemented fuel treatments in the wildland surrounding residential communities in the WUI, and those fuel treatments have been credited with providing firefighter opportunities to protect residences during the Wallow Fire and thereby preventing the loss of homes that otherwise would have been burned. To characterize the spatial pattern…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Learning to coexist with wildfire
Year: 2014
The impacts of escalating wildfire in many regions — the lives and homes lost, the expense of suppression and the damage to ecosystem services — necessitate a more sustainable coexistence with wildfire. Climate change and continued development on fire-prone landscapes will only compound current problems. Emerging strategies for managing ecosystems and mitigating risks to human communities provide some hope, although greater recognition of their inherent variation and links is crucial. Without a more integrated framework, fire will never operate as a natural ecosystem process, and the impact…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The influence of experimental wind disturbance on forest fuels and fire characteristics
Year: 2014
Current theory in disturbance ecology predicts that extreme disturbances in rapid succession can lead to dramatic changes in species composition or ecosystem processes due to interactions among disturbances. However, the extent to which less catastrophic, yet chronic, disturbances such as wind damage and fire interact is not well studied. In this study, we simulated wind-caused gaps in a Pinus taeda forest in the Piedmont of north-central Georgia using static winching of trees to examine how wind damage may alter fuel characteristics and the behavior of subsequent prescribed fire. We found…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Wildfire evacuation and its alternatives: perspectives from four United States' communities
Year: 2014
Recent years have seen growing interest within the United States fire management community in exploring alternatives to the standard approach of evacuating entire populations that are threatened by a wildfire. There has been particular interest in what can be learned from the Australian approach, whereby residents choose whether or not to evacuate under the ‘prepare, stay and defend or leave early’ approach, also called Stay or Go. Given these developments, it is useful to understand what elements are taken into consideration by those who would be most affected by a new approach when they…
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
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
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
Conditions favouring Bromus tectorum dominance of endangered sagebrush steppe ecosystems
Year: 2013
Ecosystem invasibility is determined by combinations of environmental variables, invader attributes, disturbance regimes, competitive abilities of resident species and evolutionary history between residents and disturbance regimes. Understanding the relative importance of each factor is critical to limiting future invasions and restoring ecosystems. We investigated factors potentially controlling Bromus tectorum invasions into Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis communities across 75 sites in the Great Basin. We measured soil texture, cattle grazing intensity, gaps among perennial plants…
Publication Type: Journal Article
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
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
Changes in development near public forest lands in Oregon and Washington, 1974-2005: Implications for management
Year: 2013
Development owing to population increases over the last 30 years has greatly affected forested lands in the United States. To assess and compare increases in development, we counted changes in the number of structures on a systematic grid of photointerpreted points around public forest land in Washington and Oregon. Areas bordering public forest land are showing substantial increases in development, with the number of structures on private lands near almost all types of public forest more than doubling between the 1970s and 2000s. Lands bordering Washington’s Department of Natural Resources…
Publication Type: Report
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
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
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 decision making. As this research has matured, there has been a recognition of the need to examine the full body of resulting…
Publication Type: Report
Bark Beetles and Fire: Two forces of nature transforming western forests
Year: 2012
Bark beetles are chewing a wide swath through forests across North America. Over the past few years, infestations have become epidemic in lodgepole and spruce-fir forests of the Intermountain West. The resulting extensive acreages of dead trees are alarming the public and raising concern about risk of severe fire. Researchers supported by the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) are examining the complicated relationship between bark beetles and wildfire, the two most influential natural disturbance agents in these forests. Are the beetles setting the stage for larger, more severe wildfires? And…
Publication Type: Report
A Comprehensive Guide to Fuel Management practices for Dry Mixed Conifer Forests in the Northwestern United States
Year: 2012
This guide describes the benefits, opportunities, and trade-offs concerning fuel treatments in the dry mixed conifer forests of northern California and the Klamath Mountains, Pacific Northwest Interior, northern and central Rocky Mountains, and Utah. Multiple interacting disturbances and diverse physical settings have created a forest mosaic with historically low- to mixed-severity fire regimes. Analysis of forest inventory data found nearly 80 percent of these forests rate hazardous by at least one measure and 20 to 30 percent rate hazardous by multiple measures. Modeled mechanical…
Publication Type: Report
Effects of Ungulate Herbivory on Aspen, Cottonwood, and Willow Development Under Forest Fuels Treatment Regimes
Year: 2012
Herbivory by domestic and wild ungulates can dramatically affect vegetation structure, composition and dynamics in nearly every terrestrial ecosystem of the world. These effects are of particular concern in forests of western North America, where intensive herbivory by native and domestic ungulates has the potential to substantially reduce or eliminate deciduous, highly palatable species of aspen (Populus tremuloides), cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa), and willow (Salix spp.). In turn, differential herbivory pressure may favor greater establishment of unpalatable conifers that serve as ladder…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Drought-Driven Disturbance History Characterizes a Southern Rocky Mountain Subalpine Forest
Year: 2012
The view that subalpine forest vegetation dynamics in western North America are "driven" by a particular disturbance type (i.e. fire) has shaped our understanding of their disturbance regimes. In the wake of a recent (1990s) landscape-extent spruce beetle (Dendroctonus rufipennis Kirby) outbreak in the southern Rocky Mountains, we re-examined the temporal continuity in disturbance types and interactions and the possible role of drought on their occurrence by reconstructing antecedent disturbances for 11 sites across the Markagunt Plateau, southern Utah, USA. Multiple consistent lines of…
Publication Type: Journal Article