Research Database
Displaying 61 - 80 of 131
Land use planning approaches in the wildland-urban interface: an analysis of four western states
Year: 2021
This report focuses on a critical aspect of working towards community fire adaptation: analyzing effective land use policy and regulatory solutions in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). The WUI is any area where the built and natural environments create a set of conditions that allow for the ignition and continued spread of wildfire. The severity of how wildfire impacts the WUI is influenced by a number of factors, such as where and how homes, businesses, and infrastructure are developed, weather conditions, and the amount, type, and arrangement of vegetation.Land use planning plays a role…
Publication Type: Report
The "strings attached" to community difference and potential pathways to fire adaptiveness in the wildland urban interface
Year: 2021
This article identifies specific social characteristics in two wildland urban interface communities that may have significant impacts on the ability of those communities to adapt to wildfire. Researchers used a mixed-methods approach to triangulate results to identify potential views and motives surrounding three important behaviors and values related to crafting potential strategies to mitigate wildfire risk. The analysis of quantitative data in the form of responses to Likert-type questions and qualitative data in the form of responses to questions asked during focus group sessions yielded…
Publication Type: Journal Article
“Us versus Them;” Local Social Fragmentation and Its Potential Effects on Building Pathways to Adapting to Wildfire
Year: 2021
As the need for wildfire adaptation for human populations in the wildland-urban interface (WUI) intensifies in the face of changes that have increased the number of wildfires that exceed 100 thousand acres, it is becoming more important to come to a better understanding of social complexity on the WUI landscape. It is just as important to further our understanding of the social characteristics of the individual human settlements that inhabit that landscape and attempt to craft strategies to improve wildfire adaptation that are commensurate with local values, management preferences, and local…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Planning for future fire: Scenario analysis of an accelerated fuel reduction plan for the western United States
Year: 2021
Recent fire seasons brought a new fire reality to the western US, and motivated federal agencies to explore scenarios for augmenting current fuel management and forest restoration in areas where fires might threaten critical resources and developed areas. To support this effort, we modeled the scheduling of an accelerated forest and fuel management scenario on 76 western US national forests. Specifically, we modeled a 10-year ramp up of current forest and fuel management that targeted the source of wildfire exposure to developed areas and simulated treatment in areas that accounted for 77% of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Living with wildfire in Ashland, Oregon: 2020 Data Report
Year: 2020
Wildfire affects many types of communities. Improved understandings of urban conflagrations are leading some fire-prone communities, such as Ashland, Oregon, to expand their attention from focusing solely on the intermix fringe to managing wildfire threats across more urbanized wildland-urban interface (WUI)communities. The core intent of this project was to build a partnership between the Wildfire Research (WiRē)Team and Ashland Fire and Rescue (AFR) by leveraging existing wildfire risk data collected in March 2018and pairing it with newly collected social data to better understand Ashland,…
Publication Type: Report
After the fire: Perceptions of land use planning to reduce wildfire risk in eight communities across the United States
Year: 2020
Wildfire losses are increasing across the United States, and yet land use planning to reduce wildfire risk is not federally mandated and is rarely used by local jurisdictions. We examined local government staff and leaders’ perceptions of land use planning and regulations to reduce wildfire risk, in a range of communities, after wildfire risk had been made evident with the loss of homes due to wildfire. Although policy after fire was largely unchanged we found local leaders had devoted substantial attention to the subject of land use planning. Communities were dealing with a number of…
Publication Type: Journal Article
The 1994 Eastside screens large-tree harvest limit: review of science relevant to forest planning 25 years later
Year: 2020
In 1994, a large-tree harvest standard known as the “21-inch rule” was applied to land and resource management plans of national forests in eastern Oregon and Washington (hereafter, the “east side”) to halt the loss of large, old, live, and dead trees and old forest patches. These trees and forest patches have distinct ecological, economic, and social values, as reflected in widespread fish and wildlife use, public support for protecting them, and commercial interest in harvesting them, thus they have been the topic of much discussion and debate. At the request of regional Forest Service…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Factors Associated with Structure Loss in the 2013–2018 California Wildfires
Year: 2019
Tens of thousands of structures and hundreds of human lives have been lost in recent fire events throughout California. Given the potential for these types of wildfires to continue, the need to understand why and how structures are being destroyed has taken on a new level of urgency. We compiled and analyzed an extensive dataset of building inspectors’ reports documenting homeowner mitigation practices for more than 40,000 wildfire-exposed structures from 2013–2018. Comparing homes that survived fires to homes that were destroyed, we investigated the role of defensible space distance,…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Cross-boundary wildfire and community exposure: A framework and application in the western U.S.
Year: 2019
In this report we provide a framework for assessing cross-boundary wildfire exposure and a case study application in the western U.S. The case study provides detailed mapping and tabular decision support materials for prioritizing fuel management investments aimed at reducing wildfire exposure to communities located proximal to national forests. The work was motivated by a number of factors, including a request from U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary James Hubbard (Natural Resources and Environment) to assess community wildfire risk specifically from Forest Service lands, language…
Publication Type: Report
Social Vulnerability and Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface - Annotated Bibliography
Year: 2019
Publication Type: Report
Mixed-severity wildfire and habitat of an old-forest obligate
Year: 2019
The frequency, extent, and severity of wildfire strongly influence the structure and function of ecosystems. Mixed‐severity fire regimes are the most complex and least understood fire regimes, and variability of fire severity can occur at fine spatial and temporal scales, depending on previous disturbance history, topography, fuel continuity, vegetation type, and weather. During high fire weather in 2013, a complex of mixed‐severity wildfires burned across multiple ownerships within the Klamath‐Siskiyou ecoregion of southwestern Oregon where northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina)…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Social Vulnerability and Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface: Literature synthesis
Year: 2019
The overall objective of this paper is to clarify areas of debate, clearly define and contrast disparate approaches, and synthesize findings that may help address vulnerability to wildfires and other natural hazards. While land managers and fire personnel might find it pertinent to approach biophysical and social issues separately, addressing both aspects of wildfire hazard can be productive for minimizing risk and empowering communities, neighborhoods, and households to prepare and recover from wildfire events. We aim to provide a practical grasp of social vulnerability research as it…
Publication Type: Report
Social Vulnerability and Wildfire in the Wildland-Urban Interface
Year: 2019
People living in the Pacific Northwest confrontrisks associated with environmentalhazards such as wildfire. Vulnerability towildfire hazard is commonly recognized as beingspatially distributed according to geographic conditionsthat collectively determine the probabilityof exposure. For example, exposure to wildfirehazard is higher for people living in rural, forestedsettings than in a strictly urban neighborhood becauserural housing is built in close proximity tothe threat source, e.g., flammable landscapes suchas forests and chaparral. Yet, even if levels of exposureare held constant, not…
Publication Type: Report
Where wildfires destroy buildings in the US relative to the wildland–urban interface and national fire outreach programs
Year: 2018
Over the past 30 years, the cost of wildfire suppression and homes lost to wildfire in the US have increased dramatically, driven in part by the expansion of the wildland–urban interface (WUI), where buildings and wildland vegetation meet. In response, the wildfire management community has devoted substantial effort to better understand where buildings and vegetation co-occur, and to establish outreach programs to reduce wildfire damage to homes. However, the extent to which the location of buildings affected by wildfire overlaps the WUI, and where and when outreach programs are established…
Publication Type: Journal Article
How does forest recovery following moderate-severity fire influence effects of subsequent wildfire in mixed-conifer forests?
Year: 2018
Given regional increases in fire activity in western North American forests, understanding how fire influences the extent and effects of subsequent fires is particularly relevant. Remotely sensed estimates of fire effects have allowed for spatial portioning into different severity categories based on the degree of fire-caused vegetation change. Fire effects between minimal overstory tree mortality (< 20%) and complete (or nearly complete) overstory tree mortality (> 95%) are often lumped into a single category referred to as moderate severity. In this paper, we investigated how burned…
Publication Type: Journal Article
A 35,000 yr fire history from the Oregon Coast Range, USA
Year: 2018
We extend a published 9000 yr fire history record from Little Lake, in the Oregon Coast Range, to 35,000 yr and compare it with the established pollen record from the site. The fire history is based on a high-resolution analysis of charcoal preserved in lake sediments, providing a fire history record that spans the Last Glacial Maximum in North America. The data enabled us to address questions regarding the interactions between large-scale climate changes associated with the shift from glacial to interglacial conditions and the accompanying changes in forest vegetation and fire regimes. The…
Publication Type: Book Chapter
Wildfire risk reduction in the United States: Leadership staff perceptions of local fire department roles and responsibilities
Year: 2018
As wildland fires have had increasing negative impacts on a range of human values, in many parts of the United States (U.S.) and around the world, collaborative risk reduction efforts among agencies, homeowners, and fire departments are needed to improve wildfire safety and mitigate risk. Using interview data from 46 senior officers from local fire departments around the U.S., we examine how leadership staff view their departments’ roles and responsibilities in wildfire risk reduction. Overall, our findings indicate that local fire personnel are often performing a variety of mitigation tasks…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Restoring historical forest conditions in a diverse inland Pacific Northwest landscape
Year: 2018
A major goal of managers in fire-prone forests is restoring historical structure and composition to promote resilience to future drought and disturbance. To accomplish this goal, managers require information about reference conditions in different forest types, as well as tools to determine which individual trees to retain or remove to approximate those reference conditions. We used dendroecological reconstructions and General Land Office records to quantify historical forest structure and composition within a 13,600 ha study area in eastern Oregon where the USDA Forest Service is planning…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Disequilibrium of fire-prone forests sets the stage for a rapid decline in conifer dominance during the 21st century
Year: 2018
The impacts of climatic changes on forests may appear gradually on time scales of years to centuries due to the long generation times of trees. Consequently, current forest extent may not reflect current climatic patterns. In contrast with these lagged responses, abrupt transitions in forests under climate change may occur in environments where alternative vegetation states are influenced by disturbances, such as fire. The Klamath forest landscape (northern California and southwest Oregon, USA) is currently dominated by high biomass, biodiverse temperate coniferous forests, but climate change…
Publication Type: Journal Article
Rapid growth of the US wildland-urban interface raises wildfire risk
Year: 2018
The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the area where houses and wildland vegetation meet or intermingle, and where wildfire problems are most pronounced. Here we report that the WUI in the United States grew rapidly from 1990 to 2010 in terms of both number of new houses (from 30.8 to 43.4 million; 41% growth) and land area (from 581,000 to 770,000 km2; 33% growth), making it the fastest-growing land use type in the conterminous United States. The vast majority of new WUI areas were the result of new housing (97%), not related to an increase in wildland vegetation. Within the perimeter of…
Publication Type: Journal Article